Appaloosa
This leisurely, off-and-on buddy Western, set in the New Mexico territory in 1882, stars Ed Harris (who also co-wrote the screenplay and directed) as a gunslinger who goes up against a ruthless rancher (Jeremy Irons). This film could have used a real sense of danger to go along with all the neat, tidy, highfalutin’ honor and decency. Rated R (some violence and language). At Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips

Beverly Hills Chihuahua
A pampered chihuahua from Beverly Hills becomes lost in the mean streets of Mexico. Seriously. Rated PG. At Twin Peaks.

Blind Sight
Against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, six Tibetan teenagers set out to climb the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mount Everest. The dangerous journey soon becomes a seemingly impossible challenge — made all the more remarkable by the fact that the teenagers are blind. Believed by many Tibetans to be possessed by demons, the children are shunned by their parents, scorned by their villages and rejected by society. Rescued by Sabriye Tenberken, a blind educator and adventurer, the students invite the famous blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer to visit their school and lead them higher than they have ever been before. The resulting 3-week journey is beyond anything any of them could have predicted. Music by Nitin Sawhney. Rated PG. At International Film Series. — Denver Film Society

Body of Lies
Ridley Scott directs this slick, busy international thriller that stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the CIA’s top man in Jordan, on the hunt of an Osama bin Laden-style terrorist. Russell Crowe gets most of screenwriter William The Departed Monahan’s best lines as the spymaster back home. Rated R (strong violence, including some torture, and language throughout). At Flatiron. — Michael Phillips

Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Set during the horrors of WWII, Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a film presented through the eyes of an 8-year-old boy whose father is an SS officer at a concentration camp. He maintains a secret relationship with a Jewish boy inside the camp, with unexpected consequences. Rated PG-13. At Chez Artiste.

Burn After Reading
An imperious former spook (John Malkovich) accuses his blackmailers (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) of heading a “league of morons,” in the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen. As in all Coen japes, stupid has at least a 40 percent chance of getting you killed in spectacularly violent fashion. But the cosmic joke being played on the morons here isn’t much fun in the telling. Rated R (pervasive language, some sexual content, and violence). At Flatiron and Century. — Michael Phillips

Changeling
Based on Southern California’s infamous Wineville chicken coop murders of the 1920s, this film, a combination of serial-killer saga and triumph of the human spirit, is a solid addition to Clint Eastwood’s directorial career. Eastwood tells a painful true story neatly and well, with one foot in rousing Hollywood melodrama and the other in a story that resists tidy resolution. Angelina Jolie shines as the mother of a missing boy, crusading against the law-enforcement officials who shut her away in hopes of shutting her up. Rated R (some violent and disturbing content and language). At Flatiron, Century and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips

The Dhamma Brothers
The Dhamma Brothers tells a dramatic tale of human potential and transformation as it closely follows and documents the stories of the prison inmates at Donaldson Correction Facility who enter into this arduous and intensive program. This film, with the power to dismantle stereotypes about men behind prison bars also, in the words of Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking), “gives you hope for the human race.” Jenny Phillips, the director of the film and the author of the companion book, Letters from the Dhamma Brothers, will be making a personal appearance along with Fleet Maull, founder of the Prison Dharma Network. There will be a Q&A after the screening. At Boulder Theater.

The Duchess
This film dramatizes Amanda Foreman’s popular biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (played by Keira Knightley), a cultishly adored (and sometimes loathed) celebrity of the 18th century known for her outspoken politics as much as her influence over British fashions. The Duchess is a beautifully crafted period piece, but it’s also disturbingly shallow, focused so tightly on one woman’s feelings of repression and loneliness that it lacks any perspective on her causes. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, brief nudity and thematic material). At Colony Square and Chez Artiste. — Tasha Robinson

Eagle Eye
Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan are dragooned into a vast cyber conspiracy involving a super-secret Pentagon surveillance weapon that’s basically a humorless female version of HAL 9000. The screenplay tries like the devil to get you all fussed up about omnivorous cyber-surveillance on a scale George Orwell never imagined, but the result is a hyperactive jumble that fails to whip up the right mixture of dread and propulsion. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of action and violence and for language). At Flatiron. — Michael Phillips

Happy-Go-Lucky
This is accomplished director Mike Leigh’s most buoyantly comic feature, and it’s a marvelous showcase for Sally Hawkins, who stars as the perpetually cheery Poppy, a grade-school teacher in North London. Happy-Go-Lucky is an ode to the power of irrational exuberance, and Leigh keeps the narrative machinery to a minimum. Everything is a bit neat, but a lot of Leigh’s work tends toward a heightened theatrical neatness. When it works, the result is a slice of life that, in terms of honest cinematic storytelling, is more like a slice of cake. Rated R (language). At Esquire. — Michael Phillips

The Haunting of Molly Hartley
Molly Hartley is a girl with a troubled past who looks to start fresh at a new school. After sparking with a popular student, her secrets start to seep out. Rated PG-13. At Century.

High School Musical 3
The High School Musical series isn’t aimed at high schoolers, who presumably know by now that grades 9-12 aren’t a candy-coated wonderland. It’s aimed at preteens willing to bet high school will be the best thing ever. The first two HSM movies, made for TV’s Disney Channel, broke cable viewership records, and the first film’s soundtrack was 2006’s top-selling record. HSM 3 may be shallow, but what it lacks in narrative ambition, it makes up for in dazzling choreography that’s certain to leave its target audience transfixed. Consider it is harmlessly fluffy fun. Rated G. At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Tasha Robinson

Idiots and Angels
An allegorical cartoon noir that documents one character’s journey after he awakens to find angel’s wings sprouting from his shoulder blades. Not rated. At International Film Series. 

Let the Right One In
A bullied 12-year-old boy finds solace and love with a peculiar girl, who also happens to be a vampire. Rated R. At Mayan.

The Lord God Bird
Ornithologists seek out the Lord God Bird, a bird long though extinct, in the swamps of the southern United States in this detailed documentary. With George Butler in person. Not rated. At International Film Series.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
See full screen review on page 54. Rated PG. At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks.

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
A humorous documentary on the exploitation flicks of the 1970s and 80s that seeks to prove that Australians beat out Americans when it comes to sex, gore and car chases. Rated R. At International Film Series.

Quantum of Solace
Picking up where Casino Royale left off, this latest Bond flick has the hero out to destroy the organization responsible for Vesper Lynd’s death. Rated PG-13. At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks.

Rachel Getting Married
Jonathan Demme’s most bracing narrative feature since The Silence of the Lambs combines a wedding with a tense family reunion, starring Anne Hathaway as a recovering addict returning home for her sister’s nuptials. A triumph of ambience, this is the first Demme film since the 1980s that feels like a party — bittersweet, but a party nonetheless. Rated R (language and brief sexuality). At Century, Flatiron and Mayan. — Michael Phillips

Religulous
Bill Maher and director Larry Charles get a fair number of laughs as they take aim at religious extremism in many forms. Yet even if you share Maher’s skepticism on his subject, you may wish he’d set up his straight men and straight women in a way that doesn’t merely score the cheapest possible laughs. Rated R (some language and sexual material). At Century and Esquire. — Michael Phillips

RocknRolla
Except for Tom Wilkinson’s steely turn as a London mobster, this elaborately plotted bore from Guy Ritchie goes nowhere slickly. Ritchie, who shoots and cuts everything like an ad for a particularly greasy brand of fragrance for men, delivers the beatings and killings in his trademark atmosphere of morally weightless flash. Rated R (pervasive language, violence, drug use and brief sexuality). At Century. — Michael Phillips

Role Models
Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott mentor a medieval-fantasy-prone teenager (the invaluable Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who played “McLovin” in Superbad) and a trash-talking preteen (Bobb’e J. Thompson) in this sloppy but diverting comedy. The last 20 minutes, climaxing with a Dungeons & Dragons-type battle re-enactment, redeems much of what comes before. Rated R (pervasive language, and sexual content including nudity). At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips

Secret Life of Bees
Based on Sue Monk Kidd’s 2002 novel, a hugely popular exploration of family, love and the brutal politics of race in 1964 South Carolina, this adaptation forces the characters through their paces at breakneck speed, never allowing a moment for reflection. Dakota Fanning plays Lily, a lonely budding writer who ends up in the care of four black women (Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Sophie Okonedo). It’s all very neat and tidy, but not very satisfying. Rated PG-13 (thematic material and some violence). At Flatiron, Century and Colony Square. — Jessica Reaves

Soul Men
See full screen review on page 54. Rated R. At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks.

Syndedoche, New York
This fascinating brain-bender comes from writer-director Charlie Kaufman, whose earlier scripts (such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) don’t prepare you for the conundrums here. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a theater director who dedicates his fraught life to an autobiographical performance piece he never seems to finish. Is it a dream? A death wish? It’s a movie worth seeing, even though a solid percentage of any audience will hate it. Rated R (language and some sexual content/nudity). At Mayan. — Michael Phillips

W.
Oliver Stone’s film about the life and exceptional good luck enjoyed (and squandered, if you agree with Stone) by George W. Bush may be ill-timed, unnecessary and no more psychologically probing than any other Stone movie. But much of it works as deft, brisk, slyly engaging docudrama. As with any Stone film, the swing between truth and fantasy is willful and wide. A wily and exacting Josh Brolin plays W., going just far enough with certain traits to ring the bell (the little heh-heh-heh chuckle, for instance). Rated PG-13 (language including sexual references, some alcohol abuse, smoking and brief disturbing war images). At Century and Colony Square. — Michael Phillips

Wendy and Lucy
A young and poor woman makes her way to Alaska to start a new life for herself. But when her car breaks down, and she loses her dog, she faces destitution. Rated R. At International Film Series.

What Just Happened
Small, mild, easy to watch and easier to forget, this adaptation of producer Art Linson’s Hollywood memoirs has the virtue of breeziness, and of Robert De Niro unwinding, after one too many tense performances, in the role of Linson’s alter ego, a twice-divorced and multi-directionally frazzled movie producer. Yet you leave wanting more, and funnier. Rated R (language, some violent images, sexual content and some drug material). At Chez Artiste. — Michael Phillips

Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Pittsburgh residents Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) find themselves strapped for cash and decide to make a porno to pay the rent. The verbal raunch is extreme, though this is essentially a sweet-natured “Let’s put on a show!” ensemble comedy. Rogen and Banks are great together in writer-director Kevin Smith’s latest. Rated R (strong crude sexual content including dialogue, graphic nudity and pervasive language). At Flatiron, Century and Colony Square. — Michael Phillips

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