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Success-motivated Harold (John Cho) and stoned slacker Kumar (Kal Penn), get arrested and racially profiled on a flight to Amsterdam after Kumar lights up an electronic bong that looks rather like a bomb. An idiotic Homeland Security agent (Rob Corddry) has them sent to Guantanamo Bay. They escape and make their way back to clear their names. The political satire in this semi-obscene frat-house romp has a really clever edge, so it's too bad the film limits its audience with such fatiguing lewdness. (R, 102 minutes) Contains crude and sexual content, nudity, language and drug use. Area theaters.

-- Jane Horwitz

IRON MAN

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is taken prisoner by a warlord who orders him to build a state-of-the-art weapon. Instead, Stark builds a suit of iron, the better to bust out of the cave and give his enemies a beat-down. The real Iron Man doesn't emerge until Stark is back in California. He announces that his company is getting out of the weapons business. Thenceforth, the film sets about the business of proving that plowshares can be as sexy as swords. It succeeds only fitfully. Amid so many generic fireballs, kill shots and earsplitting thumps, bumps and crunches, the film finally collapses under its own weight. (PG-13, 120 minutes) Contains intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggested sexuality. Area theaters.

-- A.H.

* JELLYFISH

The story, set in contemporary Tel Aviv, centers on three women: Batya (Sarah Adler), a waitress with a catering company; Keren (Noa Knoller), a new bride whose honeymoon doesn't go as planned; and Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre), a non-Hebrew-speaking home caregiver with a son in the Philippines and a very cranky client. The film possesses moments of striking visual poetry, such as when a mysterious child emerges from the sea and wordlessly attaches herself to the lonely Batya. The film provides a diverting portrait of modern-day Israel, as the filmmakers eschew history, politics and religion to focus instead on more intimate and universal issues of fate, loss and the longing to connect. (Unrated, 78 minutes) Contains nothing objectionable. In Hebrew, Tagalog, German and English with subtitles. At Landmark's E Street Cinema.

-- A.H.

LEATHERHEADS

George Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, a World War I vet and pioneer in the doomed sport of professional football. No one in 1925 thinks the enterprise will last, until Dodge has a brainstorm: Lure war-hero-turned-Princeton-gridiron-star Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) away from law school to help spearhead pro football's drive into the American imagination. Rah! Ace reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) has been assigned to get the goods on Carter, whose exploits in the trenches may not have been as glorious as the nation has been led to believe. There's a flatness about the whole enterprise. This misfiring begins with the casting of Zellweger but is seen, too, in the way Clooney frames his picture. There's a claustrophobia in "Leatherheads." But Clooney's performance is terrific. He possess the combination of supreme confidence and humility that has been the hallmark of the biggest male Hollywood stars. (PG-13, 114 minutes) Contains vulgar language. Regal Ballston Common and University Mall Theatres.

-- J.A.

MADE OF HONOR

Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan have it all, in terms of looks, likability and even how they blend together. But they're hapless prisoners in a nasty little caper that follows convention as conventionally as possible. Tom (Dempsey) is a lady-killer, and Hannah (Monaghan) is the one woman he never quite seduces. Who becomes his best friend. And the one, he realizes, he has been in love with all along. Cue the impossibly wonderful Colin (Kevin McKidd), whom Hannah decides to marry. So she asks Tom to be her male maid of honor. You'll never -- ever! -- guess how this turns out. (PG-13, 101 minutes) Contains profanity and sexual situations. Area theaters.

-- D.T.

* MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY

Set in 1930s London, the story of a dowdy governess who finds adventure and love when she works as a starlet's personal assistant for 24 hours is just the tonic for filmgoers eager for a film that celebrates the bearable lightness of being. Frances McDormand plays Guinevere Pettigrew, who, as the movie opens, is being summarily sacked. Director Bharat Nalluri jumps right into the action, sending Miss Pettigrew from firing to employment agency to the posh apartment of aspiring actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams) within scant minutes. For the rest of the film, Adams flirts, froths, simpers and sings her way into our hearts as a round-heeled woman with a heart of only-just-slightly-tarnished gold. The film's flaws are nothing compared with the pleasures it offers, chiefly in its unapologetic pursuit of old-fashioned sweetness and romance. (PG-13, 101 minutes) Contains partial nudity and innuendo. At University Mall Theatres.

-- A.H.

* MISTER LONELY

How can you dislike a movie built around the oddly charming spectacle of sky diving nuns (sans parachutes) and more than a dozen celebrity impersonators? Welcome to Harmony Korine's film, a visually and conceptually mesmerizing and mystical movie. The movie follows two plots. The first is the sojourn of a lonely, unappreciated Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) in rural Scotland, where he joins a commune of other faux celebs. The second story, a sort of elegiac allegory about faith, features Werner Herzog as a missionary priest who transports nuns to distant outposts in Central or South America and learns that his nuns can do much more than hail Mary. What engages us is Korine's revolutionary way of telling stories. It's as though he's downloading his dreams directly onto the screen. (Unrated, 108 minutes) Contains sexual situations and profanity. At Landmark's E Street Cinema.

-- D.T.

* NIM'S ISLAND

The plucky heroine at the center of this film is an 11-year-old girl named Nim (Abigail Breslin), who, since her mother died at sea, has lived with her scientist father, Jack (Gerard Butler). When Jack goes plankton hunting and leaves Nim behind, mayhem breaks loose. As luck would have it, her favorite author, the world explorer Alex Rover, e-mails her dad for research information, resulting in the world-famous writer making a trip to Fiji to come to Nim's aid. Jodie Foster comes in, and she gamely hits her mark. Kids will no doubt vicariously enjoy Nim's adventures and Edenic existence. And how refreshing to see a girl embark on derring-do that, in Nim's own words, makes her the hero of her own story. (PG, 95 minutes) Contains mild adventure action and brief mild profanity. Area theaters.

-- A.H.

* PENELOPE

A witch placed a curse on Penelope's family that said their first-born daughter would be born with a pig face; the afflicted heiress (Christina Ricci) could shake off the curse, but only if she were accepted and loved by "one of her own." Anyone willing to tolerate the premise of the story will be paid off by several winning performances and a moral that makes most of the absurdity worthwhile. Penelope's mom (Catherine O'Hara) arranges for a parade of male suitors to call, each of whom wants the dowry but jumps out the window (literally) when he sees Penelope's face. Eager to get the story, a reporter hires dissipated blue-blood Max Campion (James McAvoy) to take Penelope's picture. Things, as they will in such stories, don't quite go according to plan. A story like this provides so many opportunities for snarky comments -- about hamminess, or acting "chops," or reaping what you sow, or being the wurst movie of the year -- but they just won't stick. (PG, 90 minutes) Contains mature themes, innuendo and strong language. Arlington Cinema 'N' Drafthouse.

-- J.A.

* PRICELESS

The irrepressibly effervescent Audrey Tautou plays a modern courtesan. Moving from sugar daddy to sugar daddy, her existence amounts to a barter economy, and the girl likes her clothes and her fancy hotel rooms. She mistakes hotel waiter Jean (Gad Elmaleh) for another wealthy prospect, and we're off and away on a continuing Gallic farce of misunderstandings. He's so flattered, he pretends she's right -- while also trying to fulfill his obligations as a waiter. The routines may have been done a thousand times, but somehow they seem funny all over again. (PG-13, 104 minutes) Contains sexual content, including nudity. In French with subtitles. Landmark's Bethesda Row.

-- D.T.

PROM NIGHT

Though we can celebrate the substitution of suspense for gore in this remake of the 1980 film, this movie feels just plain dumb. The police are hilariously inept, and the way in which the teen victims wander off alone so the psychopath can get them is flat-footed, even for a slasher flick. High school senior Donna (Brittany Snow) still has nightmares about the home invasion and murder of her family, which she barely escaped. As she and her pals head off with their dates to the prom, the cop (Idris Elba) who caught the killer (Johnathon Schaech) learns that he has escaped. But does he warn Donna right away? Nooooo. Besides relatively stylized stabbings and throat-slittings, the movie contains sexual innuendo, teen drinking and rare profanity. "Prom Night" is not for nightmare-prone teens. (PG-13, 88 minutes) Contains violence and terror, sexual material, underage drinking and vulgar language. Area theaters.

-- J.H.

* REDBELT

Mike (Chiwetel Ejiofor) runs a martial arts academy, specializing in teaching cops, soldiers and other professionals. He will not compete in the profitable world of televised Brazilian jujistu even though he's related by marriage to the sport's reigning champion. He thinks competition, especially for TV money, desecrates the sanctity of his art. Mike is in a bar one night when a tough guy tries to take down a drunken movie star (Tim Allen). Mike jumps in. He's soon drawn into the orbit of the movies, and he encounters a whole new world of prosperity just in time, as he's discovering how little money there is in integrity. What is memorable is the film's portrait of a man of honor in a sleazy world, possibly a metaphor for the struggle of the artist to stay honorable in a world of backbiting, betrayal and hunger for easy money. (R, 99 minutes) Contains violence and strong language. Area theaters.

-- S.H.

ROMAN DE GARE

The story starts as a Paris detective (Zinedine Soualem) grills a crime novelist named Judith (Fanny Ardant) about the disappearance of Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon), her personal assistant -- and possible ghostwriter -- last seen alive on her yacht. The detective is convinced that Judith has offed Pierre for threatening to go public with the revelation that he, not Judith, deserves the credit for her novels. The movie is more entertaining than it is logical; its narrative leaps are sometimes ahead of our ability to believe them. But as the compellingly enigmatic Pierre, Pinon keeps us rapt. We are caught up in the intrigue, the mystery and the fun of the film's murderous potential, rather than feeling edge-of-the-seat discomfort and worry on behalf of the characters. (R, 103 minutes) Contains sexual situations and profanity. In French with subtitles. Area theaters.

-- D.T.

* SEA MONSTERS 3D:

A PREHISTORIC ADVENTURE

Narrated by Liev Schreiber and set to music by Peter Gabriel, this Imax extravaganza follows a female Dolichorhynchops, "dolly" for short, that plied North America's great inland ocean 250 million years ago. The film keeps "March of the Penguins"-like anthropomorphism to a minimum, instead focusing on spectacular 3-D effects that make it seem as if the dolly and her slithery contemporaries are gliding overhead or, more terrifying, sticking their 17-foot-long necks out to get right in our faces. It's "Finding Nemo" with a "Wow!" factor of about 100. (Unrated, 40 minutes) Contains potentially frightening images of prehistoric creatures, both as predators and prey. The Maryland Science Center's St. John Properties Imax Theater.

-- A.H.

SMART PEOPLE

As a widowed, burned-out English professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Dennis Quaid tries his best to bring specificity to the well-worn archetype of the misanthropic pedant. This film often seems cobbled together from other movies: Ellen Page, who plays Wetherhold's overachieving teenage daughter, here reprises the irritatingly precocious persona that made her a breakout star in last year's "Juno." Ashton Holmes stars in a thankless role as Wetherhold's disaffected son, and Thomas Haden Church delivers the film's few near-laughs as the family black sheep who provides deadpan stoner humor and shots of his bare rear end. When Lawrence begins to date an attractive physician (Sarah Jessica Parker), viewers will want the relationship to succeed if only to stop all the snarky sniping. It's impossible to tell whether the film's ending is happy because it's happy or because it's ending. (R, 93 minutes) Contains profanity, brief teen drug and alcohol use, and sexuality. Regal Ballston Common.

-- A.H.

* SON OF RAMBOW

This film dusts the cliches from the coming-of-age movie with its charming account of the growing friendship between two English boys in the early 1980s. The teens are Will (Bill Milner), a soft-spoken but plucky lad forbidden by his family's religious sect to watch television, and Lee (Will Poulter), a punky kid whose volatile family life causes him to act up at school. Thrown together by circumstance, they soon realize that their teamwork fills an emotional void in their lives. They infuse this story with a crowd-pleasing combination of buoyant spirit and occasionally dark humor, as Will, Lee and a very eccentric French exchange student (Jules Sitruk) attempt to revisit Sylvester Stallone's one-dimensional machismo territory with the goofy earnestness of youth. We cringe and laugh at -- and are ultimately moved by -- their clumsiness and innocence. (PG-13, 96 minutes) Contains violence and profanity. Area theaters.

-- D.T.

SPEED RACER

Larry and Andy Wachowski lay it on thick in this film, a frenetic, densely layered, narratively scrambled blob of moviemaking that will leave viewers alternately baffled and sensorially stunned. This supercharged adaptation of the beloved Japanese cartoon of the 1960s bears little resemblance to that anime classic of yore. Emile Hirsch barely registers as the title character. But Hirsch's decision to underplay is probably a wise one in a story overstuffed with plots and subplots involving filial betrayal, corporate malfeasance, criminal corruption and races that never seem to end. (PG, 129 minutes) Contains sequences of action, violence, profanity and brief smoking. Area theaters.

-- A.H.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES

This movie, based on a best-selling young people's novel, no doubt has been eagerly awaited by the book's fans, who most likely will be pleased by the visualization of the story's otherworldly creatures. But for the uninitiated? It's a bummer. The Spiderwick of the Chronicles in question is Arthur, a metaphysical explorer who 80 years ago discovered how to see into the supernatural world. Cue time shift to the present day, when his great-niece Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker) moves into ye olde Spiderwick estate with her twin sons, Simon and Jared (Freddie Highmore, playing both characters), and daughter Mallory (Sarah Bolger). Soon enough, though, the three Graces are on a hunt for the ghosties and gobblies that make things go bump in the night. The action is intense, violent and possibly terrifying, making it difficult to recommend as a movie the whole family will love. (PG, 97 minutes) Scary creature action and violence, peril and mature themes. University Mall Theatres.

-- A.H.

STREET KINGS

The movie's moral relativity (that the dividing line between good cop and bad cop is a matter of inches) seems like a flimsy pretext for hard-core shock value: nasty violence, colorful cussing and multi-bullet executions. The big-name casting brings no honor, or even fun, to the hackneyed roles. Forest Whitaker treats his cliched cop commander as if he were a gravitas-laden Iago. Keanu Reeves's too-cool-to-emote approach keeps us eternally distanced. Cedric the Entertainer adds no special chuckles to his cop informer. And as a Machiavellian internal affairs officer, Hugh Laurie phones in the jaded, wiser-than-thou mannerisms of Dr. Gregory House, his character in TV's popular "House." (R, 107 minutes) Contains violence and profanity. Area theaters.

-- D.T.

10,000 B.C.

Director Roland Emmerich takes the time-honored Hollywood tradition of spectacle, overkill and narrative absurdity and manages to zap almost all the fun out of it. When D'Leh (Steven Strait) manages to fell the biggest mammoth of 'em all, he wins the hand of Evolet (Camilla Belle), a blue-eyed beauty. When a band of warlords invades their settlement, making off with Evolet and a boy named Baku (Nathanael Baring), D'Leh and master hunter Tic Tic (Cliff Curtis) set off on an epic journey. On a trek that goes from mountain plateaus to jungle to desert in what seems to be a scant few days, the group winds up in what looks like Giza -- if it were the 3rd millennium B.C. and not the 10th. And who's counting, anyway? It's computer effects, not logic, that reign supreme. ( PG-13, 109 minutes) Contains sequences of intense action and violence. Arlington Cinema 'N' Drafthouse.

-- A.H.

THEN SHE FOUND ME

April Epner (Helen Hunt) is a 39-year-old teacher whose biological clock is clouding her judgment: April is marrying Ben. Like anything done for the wrong reasons, there's an implicit doom hanging over the nuptials. And then . . . the domestic effluence hits the rotary appliance: Mom dies. Ben leaves. And local TV celebrity Bernice Graves (Bette Midler), materializes to announce that she is April's biological mother. In the midst of this, Frank (Colin Firth), one of April's school dads, whose wife has abandoned him and their two children, starts lighting up April's life. The film suffers from, if anything, a lack of pure confidence in the story, the actors or the audience. But anyone going to see it won't need quite the number of clues as to how they're supposed to be feeling. They'll know. And a lot better, and a lot sooner, than April Epner. (R, 100 minutes) Contains sexual situations and vulgarity. Area theaters.

-- J.A.

21

Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), MIT professor by day, gambling entrepreneur by night, who recruits six of his best and brightest students to fly to Sin City on weekends and cheat themselves rich. It's hard to throw them a high-five. Yes, Ben Campbell (Sturgess) is a sweet, lower-middle-class kid who has dreamed all his life of going from MIT to Harvard med and accepts Micky's invitation into the circle only to put himself through school. Unfortunately, this characterization feels too saintly, too schematic. The story may be based on real events, but most of it feels patently false. It's a would-be parable about greed that emptily celebrates it, a drama about gifted people who are one-dimensional voids and, most laughable of all, a story about the giddiness of risk-taking that safely plays everything by the numbers. (PG-13, 123 minutes) Violence, nudity and sexual content. Area theaters.

-- D.T.

TYLER PERRY'S MEET THE BROWNS

Angela Bassett stars as Brenda, a single mother who lives a tough life in the Chicago projects with a teenage son, Michael (Lance Gross), and two younger daughters. She has just lost her job, her son's deadbeat father won't pay her child support and the power company has shut off her electricity. She gets a temporary reprieve when she travels to rural Georgia to attend the funeral of the father she never knew. This means meeting country kin, including the kind of spirited characters audiences expect in a Tyler Perry movie. Sit with any appreciative crowd and that special connection with Perry can rock the joint. (PG-13, 100 minutes) Contains drug content, strong language, sexual references and brief violence. Marlow 6 Theatres and AMC Magic Johnson.

-- D.T.

UNDER THE SAME MOON

Rosario (Kate del Castillo) has been living in Los Angeles for five years, working as a maid and sending money back to her 9-year-old son, Carlitos (Adrian Alonso), who lives with his grandmother in Mexico. A sudden turn of events inspires the resourceful Carlitos to travel to California to find Rosario, even though he possesses only a mailing address and a vague notion of where she calls him every week from a pay phone. The tone never succumbs to unremitting grimness. Instead, the filmmakers regularly leaven their story with little unexpected grace notes of humor and tender irony. The fact that this film has been crafted with such an adroit, sensitive touch should reassure viewers that, as it approaches its utterly gripping climax, their hearts are in good hands, too. (PG-13, 109 minutes) Contains mature themes. In Spanish with subtitles. Regal Ballston Common.

-- A.H.

VANTAGE POINT

The president of the United States (William Hurt) has come to Spain to make an announcement about the war on terror. Shots are fired. And then a huge explosion occurs in a city square, killing virtually no one -- no one with a name in the credits, anyway -- which allows the director to rewind the story's first 23 minutes and lay out the same scenario from a different point of view. And to do this multiple times. Conceivably, it might have worked. In reality, however, during the third or fourth reprise of the assassination attempt and bombing, a member of my audience let out an involuntary "Oh, God . . ." and the rest of the house erupted in sympathetic laughter. (PG-13, 90 minutes) Contains intense violence and action, disturbing images and brief strong language. Arlington Cinema 'N' Drafthouse.

-- J.A.

* THE VISITOR

Richard Jenkins plays widowed economics professor Walter Vale, who reluctantly agrees to give a paper at NYU and, upon arriving at his Manhattan pied-a-terre, discovers that it has been illegally sublet to Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira), both of whom are undocumented. After first throwing the couple out, Vale impulsively takes pity on them. What ensues is a remarkable friendship and, when Tarek's mother arrives, a budding romance. The film gives viewers a perceptive, deeply personal take on the timeless immigrant narrative, in which the most epic journey is finally one of self-discovery. (PG-13, 103 minutes) Contains strong language. Area theaters.

-- A.H.

* WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

Not that this film is any kind of great movie, but it's an exceedingly bright comedy that never makes you feel stupid for enjoying its brisk pacing, smart lines, sound construction and superb comic acting. Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz have gone to Vegas for some healing. They meet one drunken evening and get married. Okay, time for quickie divorce, except she gives him a quarter, he feeds it into a slot machine and they win $3 million. Who gets it? Each tries to get the whole pot, and an irritable judge (Dennis Miller) isn't satisfied they've tried hard enough, so he sentences them to live together for six months. The real pleasure in the film comes from the two stars, both of whom put vanity and narcissism far behind and are pleased to let the movie deploy them as less than noble, less than capable, less than smart, less than selfless and less than beautiful and, therefore, more than human. ( PG-13, 99 minutes ) Contains sexual situations and crude language, including a drug reference. Area theaters.

-- S.H.

* YOUNG@HEART

This film is a festival of good behavior, a little talent, a lot of work and a kind of commitment to the ideas that shows must go on, that individuals must sacrifice for the whole and that doing good is better, though harder, than talking good. It follows a choir of generally peppy septuagenarians from Northhampton, Mass., through six weeks of practice, trial, tribulation and performance. The gimmick that has propelled the group to a small measure of fame is that they're rockers, rappers and punkers. Singing in the chorus gives meaning to life; living for the whole and not the self, the love of comrades of the same circumstance and situation, that's what keeps them alive. (PG, 110 minutes) Contains adult themes. Area theaters.

-- S.H.