APPALOOSA

Rated R • Regal Beach Blvd., Regal Mall St. Augustine

Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) are freelance lawmen, plying their trade in lawless towns. They ride into dusty Appaloosa and convince town leaders to give them control of the place so they can start gunning down a rabble-rousing gang led by villainous Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). Renee Zellweger plays Allie French, a widowed piano teacher who falls in love with Virgil. The pace picks up when rival gunfighter Ring Shelton (Lance Henriksen) shows up, and Virgil and Everett leave Appaloosa for a showdown in Rio Seco. But the relationship between the two lawmen isn’t tested, and the shifting of alliances between the town fathers and Bragg is given short shrift. Still, Harris and Mortensen are an appealing team, and the shoot-outs are appealingly no-nonsense.

BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA

Rated PG • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Cinemark Tinseltown, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

Drew Barrymore lends her voice to Chloe, a privileged SoCal pooch who goes on vaca in Mexico with some careless humans who lose her. She encounters other Chihuahuas — the local Hispanics — who show her authentic Chihuahua heritage while helping her find her way back to LaLa Land.

BODY OF LIES

Rated R • AMC Regency Square, Regal Beach Blvd.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, a CIA super-agent globetrotting to any Middle East location his snide D.C.-based boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) sends him to. He wears brown contact lenses to cover his Western blues, and to help convince us that foreign subjects might believe he is of Middle Eastern descent. Based on David Ignatius’s novel, “Body of Lies” trudges through on the strength of DiCaprio’s hardy performance, but the film’s bombast is somewhat off-putting. If there’s a political message to the carefully orchestrated series of explosions that occur in “Body of Lies,” it’s that United States ops are being fed to the wolves by some fairly clueless overweight guys at Langley.

BOLT

Rated PG • Opens on Friday, Nov. 21

This new animated movie from Disney is being compared to “The Truman Show” in that it’s about a naïf who’s lived his life entirely on-screen as a super-hero dog. Bolt (voiced by John Travolta) believes he has the super-powers he’s been given by the TV writers and director (James Lipton). Mistakenly shipped from Hollywood to New York City, Bolt sets out on a cross-country trek back home, encountering real life on the streets, where females might be males — he meets a cat named Mr. Mittens (voiced by Susie Essman) — and superpowers do not a hero make. Other stars lending their voices to the cast include Miley Cyrus, Mark Walton, Malcolm McDowell and Deidrich Bader.

CHANGELING

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Cinemark Tinseltown, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd., Regal Mall St. Augustine

Single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) asks police to find her missing son in 1928 Los Angeles. Director Clint Eastwood piles on extraneous subplots: a corrupt police force manipulating Christine’s misfortune, her exploitation by both the rabid media and opportunistic radio evangelist Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich). At first, Jolie evokes the emotional purity of silent-movie icons like Gish and Sibirskaya. Then Eastwood puts on the screws, and Jolie goes limp, going for pity. “Changeling’s” B-movie triteness is a familiar, and unwelcome, feeling.

CITY OF EMBER

Rated PG • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Cinemark Tinseltown, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd., Regal Mall St. Augustine

Director Gil Kenan has created an oddly beautiful universe in this fantasy film aimed at the younger set. The title town is a sealed, underground maze of dwellings established after a worldwide disaster 200 years before. A metal box, with instructions on how to return above-ground when two centuries have passed, was saved by the original town’s mayor. Ember is sustained by a generator threatening to fail, and power outages increase in frequency and duration. Despite the imminent crisis, Ember’s paunchy, corrupt mayor (Bill Murray) blithely carries out his duties, handing out dead-end job assignments to just-graduated students. But young Lin (Saoirse Ronan), fatherless daughter of a distracted mother (Mary Kay Place) discovers and decodes clues about Ember’s future and past. Her co-conspirator is Doon (Harry Treadaway), motherless son of an inventor (Tim Robbins) who may have stumbled onto a way to escape the doomed city.

THE DUCHESS

Rated PG-13 • Regal Avenues

Keira Knightley plays yet another corset-wearing, bewigged 18th-century lady bucking the court system — in this case, the courts of King George III of England. Georgiana was a teenager when she wed the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). It’s a loveless union — the Duke has a mistress who lives with them — so she starts to rebel against what society believes is proper behavior for an aristocrat. With Charlotte Rampling and Simon McBurney.

EAGLE EYE

Rated PG-13 • AMC Orange Park (IMAX), AMC Regency Square (IMAX), Cinemark Tinseltown, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

The usually enjoyable Shia LaBeouf is not so much in this action thriller about Jerry (LaBeouf), an ordinary guy forced into dangerous situations by a woman he doesn’t know, who makes threatening phone calls. She’s also calling Rachel (Michelle Monaghan) and so the two strangers are thrown together on the run, tracked by the weirdo puppeteer. It’s hi-tech paranoia.

FIREPROOF

Rated PG • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Cinemark Tinseltown

Kirk Cameron is back on the big screen as Caleb Holt, a firefighter in a troubled marriage. His wife, Catherine (Erin Bethea), seems ready to leave him and he doesn’t have the interest to fight her, until his dad suggests a last-ditch effort: the Love Dare. The movie has strong Christian undertones as it addresses marital bonds in a modern society.

THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY

Rated PG-13 • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

Haley Bennett stars as 17-year-old Molly, a troubled girl whose mentally ill mother stabbed her. She and her dad Robert (Jake Weber, hottie husband on “Medium”) have moved to a new town, which, of course, means a new school. It’s tough enough having to start over in your senior year, but even worse when you’re expected to be a slave to the Devil himself. With Chace “Gossip Girl” Crawford.

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR

Rated PG • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd., Regal Mall St. Augustine

Disney promises this is the last in the wildly popular series. Well, hell, it’s gotta be, right? These actors are, like, 35 years old by now, aren’t they?

HOUSE

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City

This horror flick is a cautionary tale: When in Alabama, don’t go out in the countryside, where maniac killers are apparently on the loose. With Michael Madsen, Reynaldo Rosales and Heidi

Dipplod.

LAKEVIEW TERRACE

Rated PG-13 • AMC Regency Square

Samuel L. Jackson’s turn as a racist, hypocritical LAPD cop with a God complex is annoying. Jackson plays Abel Turner, a control freak who initially seems to be a loving, caring father, but reveals his true colors before long. He also torments interracial newlyweds Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington), who’ve just moved into Abel’s quiet suburban neighborhood. Ultimately, Abel’s too goody-goody to be a true badass (which is what Jackson fans expect), and too hostile to be even remotely likeable.

MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA

Rated PG • AMC Orange Park (IMAX), AMC Regency Square (IMAX), Carmike Amelia Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd., Regal Mall St. Augustine

In this anticipated sequel to “Madagascar,” Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock), Melman (David Schwimmer), Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen), Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer), the penguins and the chimps are marooned on Madagascar. Uniting in an escape plan, they repair an old airplane and make their move. With the late Bernie Mac, Alec Baldwin, Will.i.Am, Meredith Viera, Lesley Stahl and Al Roker.

MAX PAYNE

Rated PG-13 • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square

Mark Wahlberg is getting typecast as the young rebellious cop — here he’s a DEA agent teaming up with a vengeful woman (Mila Kunis, Jackie on “That ’70s Show”) to find the ruthless killers who murdered their loved ones.

PRIDE AND GLORY

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square

The blurry line between good cops and bad cops gets another go-’round in “Pride and Glory,” and the results are mixed. This time it’s the NYPD, with bad cops on the take for the right reasons (to provide for family, to clean up the streets), and good cops too virtuous to let them get away with it. At the center of writer/director Gavin O’Connor’s drama is the Tierney family, a clan of cops with divergent priorities. Ray (Edward Norton) has been off the street for two years after a bad experience. Brother Francis (Noah Emmerich) leads his own unit. Sister Megan (Lake Bell) is married to Jimmy (Colin Farrell), also a cop. And the Tierneys’ patriarch, Francis Sr. (Jon Voight), is a chief who knows how the system works, which makes it all the more baffling when no one listens to him. The script, co-written by Joe Carnahan, centers on the murder of four policemen around Christmas. Jimmy leads fellow officers in an investigation while Ray heads a task force and learns the killer is Angel Tezo (Ramon Rodriguez). From here, it’s interesting to see Jimmy and Ray pursue Angel in their own ways. The gulf between them is the sole source of the dramatic tension leading up to one brother realizing the other is corrupt.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Rated R • Opens on Friday, Nov. 14 at AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd., Regal Mall

St. Augustine

Daniel Craig is back as blond Bond in this latest installment in the suave super spy series. With Judi Dench as M, Giancarlo Giannini, Gemma Arterton and Jeffrey Wright.

QUARANTINE

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square

This one opens without credits, viewed through the lens of a TV cameraman following a reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) covering a typical night at a local fire station. Of course, all hell breaks loose when an emergency call comes in, and a fire truck (TV team in tow), races to a disturbance at a downtown apartment building. Something’s infecting residents there, turning them into slobbering carnivores. They’re typical post-George Romero zombies in every way except they’re not dead — they’re afflicted with a new, virulent form of rabies. The CDC and local police lock the building down, quarantining the uninfected with the diseased while trying to figure out what to do. Of course, the quarantined get killed in increasingly grizzly fashion, all recorded by the steadfast cameraman and his increasingly hysterical reporter. “Quarantine” is directed by John Erick Dowdle, who succeeds in creeping and grossing us out where details are sketchy, fleeting and confusing.

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, Cinemark Tinseltown, Regal Beach Blvd.

Anne Hathaway stars in this quirky film regarding a young woman on the rocky road of serial rehab who takes a break from lockdown to attend her sister’s wedding. With Rosemarie DeWitt, Mather Zickel, Bill Irwin and Debra Winger.

ROCKNROLLA

Rated R • AMC Regency Square, Regal Beach Blvd.

Directed by Guy Ritchie, this drama involves hardened criminal types in London vying for some of the massive coin being made by a real estate scam run by the Russian mob. With Jeremy Piven, Ludacris, Thandie Newton and Tom Wilkinson.

ROLE MODELS

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd., Regal Mall

St. Augustine

This mean-spirited, immature and blatantly offensive comedy with no regard for political correctness is absolutely hilarious. Danny (Paul Rudd) and Wheeler (Seann William Scott) are court-ordered to perform 150 hours of community service mentoring troubled youths at a place called “Sturdy Wings.” Danny’s charge is Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a nerd so into the role-playing game “Laire,” Danny can’t relate. Wheeler’s stuck with foul-mouthed Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson), who’s so disobedient he slaps Wheeler’s face and tries to steal his jeep. Though Rudd and Scott get consistent laughs, Thompson steals the show. There’s something to be said for movies that crack us up by doing and saying things that wouldn’t be tolerated in this politically correct world. Danny and Wheeler may not be good role models for anyone, but it’s a riot watching them try.

SAW V

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues

What plot there is takes up right after “Saw IV,” which detectives Strahm (Scott Patterson) and Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) survived, the former after giving himself an improvised tracheotomy. Strahm soon begins to suspect his fellow cop of nefarious intentions, especially since Hoffman came through the ordeal with Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) practically scratch-free. While Strahm tries to get the goods on his former partner, five more hapless souls are trapped in a version of “Truth or Consequences” in which each ends up trying to save himself or herself at the expense of the others. For the viewer, the serial deaths are diversion from the plot about Strahm’s pursuit of Hoffman and the rationale behind Hoffman’s assumption of Jigsaw’s mantle.

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES

Rated PG-13 • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

Dakota Fanning is moving smoothly from child star to young actress. In this film based on the Oprah-sanctioned novel, she plays Lily, a small-town Southern girl whose dad owns a peach orchard. She’s motherless, so her father has hired Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), a young black woman, to look after her. It’s 1964, and when Rosaleen gets in a row with some local racists, she and Lily have to get out of town, fast. They end up at a honey farm run by sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo) with whom they form a family based not on biology but love and honey.

SOUL MEN

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson play Floyd Henderson and Louis Hinds, respectively, over-and-done R&B backup singers once known collectively as the Real Deal. They’re reunited by the death of their more famous frontman Marcus Hooks (John Legend). Talk about a tribute show for Marcus at the Apollo Theater spurs The Real Deal to make a comeback. In a chartreuse Caddy convertible, the two bicker across the country, warming up their sketchy live act in whatever dives they can. Will they get to the Apollo on time?

TWILIGHT

Rated PG-13 • Opens on Friday, Nov. 21

Kristen Stewart plays Bella, a pretty teenager who meets Edward (Robert Pattinson), a mesmerizing young man with some hidden talents — like leaping tall buildings and living forever. Her dilemma: Become a vampire to stay with him or stay mortal, grow old and bitter and die? Based on the best-seller by Stephenie Meyer.

ZACH AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO

Rated PG-13 • Cinemark Tinseltown, 5 Points Theatre

Kevin Smith directs this comedy about two platonic friends who hook up to make an adult film for some much-needed cash. Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen play the sex-less couple, who find themselves more attracted to each other than they first thought. Opens on Friday, Oct. 31.

OTHER FILMS

MOCA JAX FILM SERIES

The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Film Festival present “Remarkable Power” at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 20 at the museum, 333 N. Laura St., Jacksonville. Admission is $6 for members, $8 for non-members. “Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy” is screened at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 27. Award-winning independent and foreign films are screened every Thursday through Dec. 4.

366-6911 ext. 231.

WEEKEND NATURE MOVIES

“A Century of Shrimping” is shown at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the big screen every Sat. and Sun. during November at GTM Research Reserve Environmental Education Center, 505 Guana River Road, Ponte Vedra. 823-4500.

IMAX THEATER

“Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” is screened along with “Wild Ocean,” “Bugs, A Rainforest Adventure,” “Antarctica” and “Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia” at World Golf Village, One World Golf Place, Exit 323 off I-95, St. Augustine. Times, dates and ticket prices vary. 940-IMAX.

ON VIDEO

HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

Guillermo del Toro, who co-wrote the coming-of-age comic melodrama with Hellboy orginitor/ comic artist Mike Mognola, has an eye for detail, but something's missing. Macho Hellboy (Ron Perlman) lives with newly pregnant, pyrokinetic squeeze Liz (Selma Blair) at New Jersey's Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. Soon enough, the tranquil life blows up -- Dark Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) goes on a violent rampage to find the missing part of a crown that will awaken and army of clockwork soldiers, enabling him to rule the world. Hellboy and team -- scaly pal Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and German gasbag Johann -- fight Nuada's weird creatures. The battles don't build with the pizzazz we'd expect, but it's visually satisfying.

THIS CHRISTMAS

In this surprisingly good seasonal drama, Loretta Deving stars as Ma'Dere, matriarch of a large, boisterous family gathered together during the holidays after several spent apart. With Mekhi Phifer, Delroy Lindo, Chris Brown, Regina King and Idris Elba.