‘Invictus’
Rated PG-13
♦♦♦
Clint Eastwood’s latest is a sports film less about what’s on the playing field than what’s happening in the stands. It’s the story of South Africa’s sea change under Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) told through the unlikely prism of sport. It comes off like a case study in leadership, perhaps a bit clinical and limited, but still deeply revealing. When Mandela takes office in 1994, he embraces the rugby national team, the Springboks, and seeks to turn a symbol of apartheid into a beacon of hope. It feels like destiny fulfilled hearing Freeman — who has long sought to play the role — speak Mandela’s halting, humble speech. No one could be better. “Invictus” is dripping with inspiration, and Eastwood’s extraordinary late period remains a good place to find it. With a blond, beefed-up Matt Damon as the rugby team’s captain and one truly terrible song from a South African boy band.

‘The Lovely Bones’
Rated PG-13
♦♦1/2
Odd as it sounds, Peter Jackson needed to come down to Earth a bit more in his adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-seller about a murdered girl looking back on her life from beyond. The visionary filmmaker behind “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy still is in fantasy land, and the film suffers for it as Jackson crafts lovely but ineffectual dreamscapes of the afterlife that eviscerate much of the human side of the story. Saoirse Ronan leads an able cast chronicling her character’s journey from sensitive 14-year-old schoolgirl to shattered soul stuck in a nether zone between earth and heaven. The images often are striking, but the spectacle Jackson creates distracts from the mortal drama of regret and heartache he’s trying to tell. Rose McIver as Ronan’s younger sister delivers a standout performance in a cast that includes Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci.

‘Brothers’
Rated R
♦♦
Jim Sheridan’s remake of the acclaimed 2004 Danish film “Brodre,” has aspirations for “Deer Hunter” territory — a minor-key examination of the cost blue-collar families pay for war. Where “Deer Hunter” was epic in its reach, “Brothers” never really leaves the front yard. While Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is held prisoner by the Taliban in Afghanistan, his wife (Natalie Portman), thinking he’s dead, befriends Sam’s brother, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal). When Sam returns, damaged from a traumatic experience, his rage boils over. It’s a simple story and “Brodre” had a lyrical quality, a poetry lacking in Sheridan’s sleeker, more sentimental film. “Brothers” can’t preserve the intimacy of the original, and the loosened characters slide into cliche despite noble intentions.

‘The Last Station’
Rated R
♦♦♦
In Michael Hoffman’s historically based film about Tolstoy’s last days, the great Russian writer’s legacy is seemingly up for grabs. On one side are the Tolstoyans (Paul Giamatti plays their leader), ardent followers of Tolstoy’s late philosophies of poverty and renunciation. On the other is Tolstoy’s wife, the Countess Sofya Tolstoy (Helen Mirren), who curses their “revolutionary nonsense” and is desperately trying to prevent Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) from giving away his estate. James McAvoy plays a visiting Tolstoyan, who — like Tolstoy, himself — begins to doubt its rigidity, especially after he meets the carefree Marsha (Kerry Condon). In this richly acted film, love and human flaws have a way of making a mockery of dogma and the deification of genius artists. In celebrating nature in all of its messy, vulgar glory, Hoffman’s camera floats through the tall birch trees.

‘Up in the Air’
Rated R
♦♦♦
For two-thirds of the journey, George Clooney’s traveling-man comedy flies even straighter and truer than director Jason Reitman’s teen-pregnancy hit “Juno,” delivering snappy screwball dialogue with deep touches of pathos. The film strays off course in the final act, veering from an insightful portrait of willful disconnection in our age of portability and turning kind of mushy, kind of vague, kind of conventional. Clooney plays his character — a man who lives for his frequent-flyer life, traipsing the country firing people at downsizing companies — to perfection, presenting a lovably over-confident road-trip warrior. He’s matched with great travel companions in Vera Farmiga as his frequent-flyer soul mate and Anna Kendrick as a young colleague whose innovations could ground him for good. Reitman’s production is first-class, but the movie ends up landing on familiar turf rather than the bold, exotic location where it seemed bound early on.

‘Me and Orson Welles’
Rated PG-13
♦♦1/2
In Richard Linklater’s adaptation of the historical fiction novel by Robert Kaplow, our view of the great, charismatic director and thespian isn’t straight on, but sideways. We see Welles (Christian McKay) from the perspective of an aspiring teenager, Richard Samuels (Zac Efron), who lands a bit part in Welles’ 1937 production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” at the Mercury Theatre in New York. Fame is imminent for Welles, and he knows it. Richard passionately wants to be around theater, movies and music: It’s a picture of the artist as a young heartthrob. Though Efron’s fly on-the-wall performance is effortless and confident, it also lacks heft. McKay, a previously unknown British theater actor, has Welles down pat: the ever-shifting eyebrows, the sonorous, arch baritone, the “old man.” Though this brisk, amiable film revels in the backstage banter and ramshackle rehearsals of a theater company coming to life, it fails to heed Welles’ own advice: “Make ‘em sweat.”

‘Ninja Assassin’
Rated R
♦1/2
When considering the meager merits of this blood-splattered bone-snapper, it’s best to remember the words of John Goodman’s PC-challenged character in “The Big Lebowski”: “The man in the black pajamas, Dude. Worthy … adversary.” The makers of “Ninja Assassin” want to make those words real and rescue the ninja from the province of turtles. They have a funny way of paying respect to the sword-wielding saboteurs, though. Director James McTeigue (“V for Vendetta”) is clearly more interested in spraying geysers of digital blood than in establishing the ninja as a foe to be taken seriously. Another problem: Since the movie’s ninjas only come out in the dark, the fight scenes are murky and almost impossible to follow. No worthy adversaries here. Korean pop star Rain and Naomie Harris lead the cast of the movie, which centers on a rogue hit man who betrays his clan of assassins.

‘The Road’
Rated R
♦♦
Director John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel strives to stay close to the book, but it fails to translate its essence and somehow feels more dreary than it should — which is saying something for a story about the apocalypse. Despite its end-of-the-world setting — an ashen wasteland dotted by marauding cannibals — McCarthy’s book is, at heart, a father-son parable. We know them only as The Man (Viggo Mortenson) and The Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Hillcoat’s film feels altogether uncertain, unable to find the scene-to-scene drama of their tenuous survival. Our dominant impression of the Man is his morbidity; Mortensen, a fine actor, doesn’t evoke the weighty, terse steadfastness of the Man. Adapting a masterpiece such as “The Road” is a thankless task, but the film doesn’t work on its own merits. “The Road” should reverberate with the most central questions of life and death, hope and despair.

‘Planet 51’
Rated PG
♦1/2
This sci-fi family tale offers passable computer imagery but is an aborted liftoff when it comes to the lame story of a human astronaut among little green aliens who, for some uninspired reason, are living the serene “Ozzie and Harriet” life of 1950s America. Video-game veteran Jorge Blanco shifts to the big screen with an adventure as bland as the sitcommy decade that fostered it. Likewise, voice stars Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel and Justin Long seem to take their cue from the Ward Cleaver school of parental droning. Even vocal gymnast John Cleese sounds neutered as a partly mad alien scientist, while only Gary Oldman adds some bark as an alien general. Johnson provides vocals for the astronaut hero, who is befriended by a few young aliens while the rest of their planet wants to hunt him down as a monster. Though set on another world, the jokes are as derivative as they come, the filmmakers endlessly mining human pop culture in a vain search for laughs.
— Associated Press

‘Everybody’s Fine’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
For those weary of the cuddly Robert De Niro, the gentle uplift of his latest film probably isn’t going to be tonic for the soul. Playing a retiree looking to reconnect with his adult children, De Niro does offer a master class of minimalist acting. If writer-director Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine”) had allowed his lead actor a bit more room to roam into the dark corners of his character, the movie’s fast path toward late-life insight would have felt more earned. Still, De Niro’s work possesses such a quiet power that Jones’ well-crafted film disappoints only in the sense that it could have delivered more. With Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell as the grown children.

‘Old Dogs’
Rated PG
1 1/2 stars
In case anyone in the audience isn’t sure when to cackle, coo, snicker or sigh, the makers of this dead stray of a family comedy have provided a handy on-screen prompt. It’s an old dog, reacting with grunts of canine confusion or curiosity over the antics of Robin Williams and John Travolta. Director Walt Becker cuts away to the pooch, the aging pet of Travolta’s character, so often that maybe the dog should have shared top billing in this rubbish about middle-aged buddies caring for young twins one of them never knew he fathered. After ham-fisted flashbacks chronicling Williams’ whirlwind romance with a woman played by Kelly Preston, Travolta’s real-life wife, the movie stumbles from one clumsy anecdotal sketch to the next as she dumps the surprise 7-year-olds (one played by Travolta and Preston’s daughter) on the guys. A real family affair for Travolta, but not for the rest of us.

‘The Princess and the Frog’
Rated G
3 stars
The spirit of Walt Disney lives on in this return to hand-drawn animation by the studio that pioneered the art form. Disney has gone back to its roots with a fresh, funny retelling of a classic fairy tale. This isn’t the second coming of “Beauty and the Beast” or “The Lion King.” It’s just plain pleasant, an old-fashioned charmer that’s not straining to be the next glib animated compendium of pop-culture flotsam. Updating the Brothers Grimm tale “The Frog Prince” to the Louisiana bayou in the 1920s, the film centers on a waitress (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) whose dream of opening her own restaurant is sidetracked when she encounters a smooth-talking prince (Bruno Campos) transformed into a frog. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker (“The Little Mermaid”) deliver a satisfying gumbo of snappy dialogue, lovable characters, bright-hued images and toe-tapping tunes by Randy Newman, all of it spiced up with just the right touch of voodoo peril.

‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’
Rated PG-13
1 1/2 stars
As every Stephenie Meyer fan knows, this is the one where studly vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) dumps human girlfriend Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) for her own safety, and she turns to old chum Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) for solace, unaware that he’s a werewolf, and therefore Edward’s sworn enemy. Fans will turn out in blockbuster legions, but here are a few of the many things wrong with director Chris Weitz’s adaptation: It’s really two half moons, or two halves of a movie that don’t quite fit. Mopey teenager Bella has all the luster of, well, a mopey teenager. The real rivalry is whether werewolves or vampires can behave with greater preposterousness and pretension. Finally, “New Moon” is boring, eternally so. The soap-opera melodrama of Stewart, Pattinson and Lautner’s performances provides some unintentional laughs. Yet Stewart is on screen almost all the time, and her Bella is just a drag to be around. With her flat speech and listless presence, it’s unfathomable how two different sets of monsters could fixate so completely on her.
— Associated Press