Ratings based on four-star system.
‘Daybreakers’
Rated R
? 1/2
There are more revisionist vampire stories out there than you can shake a stake at nowadays, and they’re getting tiresome. At least vampire tales such as TV’s “True Blood” or the movie thriller “Thirst” are playful and sexy, and stuff such as “Twilight” is fun to make fun of. But this one from sibling writer-directors Peter and Michael Spierig plays like a dirge, striking one long, monotonous note of gloom. Ethan Hawke stars as a reluctant vampire in the world of 2019, where most of humanity has become bloodsuckers and the supply of blood is running out. The race is on to find a substitute — or a cure to vampirism after a band of humans stumbles onto a way to change the undead back to friendly mortals. The story is humdrum, the dialogue insipid, the visual trappings derivative of countless better futuristic tales. With Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill and Claudia Karvan.

‘Leap Year’
Rated PG
?? 1/2
This romantic-comedy gets by, barely, on the charms of its stars and the beauty of its Irish scenery. Amy Adams and Matthew Goode aren’t particularly convincing during the loathing portion of their on-screen couple’s love-hate relationship, but when the ice thaws, they bring a tender depth of feeling to the oh-so-ordinary material. There’s half a watchable movie here and, as luck would have it, you have to sit through a good 45 minutes of creaky contrivances to get to the good stuff. Adams’ control-freak Anna flies to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend, gets waylaid on the western coast and falls prey to the scruffy charms of Declan (Goode). She hires him to drive her to Dublin and, somehow, this short journey takes three days, long enough for expected romance to blossom and epiphanies to occur. Adams and Goode rise above the material and make you care.

‘Youth in Revolt’
Rated R
??
The ratios in Miguel Arteta’s adaptation of C.D. Payne’s popular novel are out of whack. Steve Buscemi and Zach Galifianakis are barely utilized, yet we get two Michael Ceras. Cera plays Nick Twisp, a precocious 16-year-old Californian who decides his virginity is an issue that must be addressed. On a summer trip to a trailer park in the country with his mother (Jean Smart) and her boyfriend (Galifianakis), Nick falls for the beautiful Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday). To win her, he invents an alter-ego: a brash, arrogant French playboy dubbed Francois Dillinger. With smart dialogue that calls attention to itself and a manifested devil-on-the-shoulder, “Youth in Revolt” is a bit like a combination of “Juno” and “Fight Club.” Cera is clever and subtle, but doesn’t have the range for multiplicity. With little genuine rebelliousness and a lot of tired geek-wants-to-have-sex story, the overdone quirkiness of “Youth in Revolt” disappoints. With Ray Liotta, Justin Long and Fred Willard, the lone adult who gets anything fun to do.

‘The White Ribbon’
Rated R
????
Michael Haneke’s masterpiece immerses viewers, making squeamish voyeurs of them as they watch a small German town come unhinged amid unexplained violence and tragedy as World War I approaches. The Austrian writer-director has crafted a gorgeously gloomy parable exploring the origins of hatred, malice and communal barbarity, the sort of madness of the masses that would explode in Germany a generation later. The film is grim even by Haneke’s normal dour and disturbing standards, with exquisite black-and-white images by cinematographer Christian Berger that help create the illusion of a window in time looking back to the early 20th century. The film hints that the town’s young ones might be responsible for the dark deeds, children reared in tyrannical devotion to a puritanism their lustful, abusive parents fail to follow. But Haneke’s not the sort of storyteller to make things easy on the audience by spelling out anything for sure.

‘The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond’
Rated PG-13
? 1/2
Made from a screenplay written by Tennessee Williams in 1957, the film does little to suggest the script’s decades of neglect was unwarranted. That we should now, decades later, have a fresh, unmade Williams film might be cause for celebration and a few exuberant Stanley Kowalski impressions. But it’s difficult to know if the failings of “Teardrop Diamond” are due to the material itself (which one suspects) or its late, worshipful creation (also likely a factor). Jodie Markell, an actress making her directorial debut, and her star, Bryce Dallas Howard, approach the movie earnestly. Howard plays Fisher Willow, a Sorbonne-educated heiress summoned back from Europe to make good in 1920s Memphis society. The best thing “Teardrop Diamond” does, with its familiar Williams archetypes and his trademark Southern Gothic, is make you feel like renting some of the playwright’s more substantial work.

‘Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel’
Rated PG
?
A movie that offers exactly two big laughs for its kiddo audience — one involving passing gas, the other a shot to the crotch. In the considerable gap between these two bits of comic invention, you have plenty of time to ponder why the movie turns on the idea of Dave (Jason Lee) sending Alvin, Simon and Theodore to high school. Do chipmunks, particularly world-famous rock star chipmunks, really need a diploma? Aren’t they already smarter than Dave? While there’s no story, the movie does double the number of rodents, introducing the girl group, The Chipettes. Alvin and the boys compete against The Chipettes in a talent show, while that darned Ian (David Cross) tries to kidnap the … oh, why bother going into detail? Just know there’s twice the chipmunks and about half the laughs of the 2007 holiday hit.
— Associated Press

‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’
Rated PG
2-1/2 stars
Terry Gilliam’s film is more than a peculiar coda for Heath Ledger, the star who died midway through production. With relatively few changes, Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown refashioned the script so that Ledger’s part could be finished with three actors filling in: Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. Farrell is the best and most dynamic of the bunch. The resulting film is an outlandish juggling act. It teeters, creaks and breaks at the seams but somehow holds together better than you would expect. It’s overstuffed and ultimately spins out of control, but one leaves the theater impressed at Gilliam’s resilience in creating such ornate tales. Christopher Plummer plays Dr. Parnassus, whose traveling show leads people through a mirror and into a world of imagination (which can look something like the Monty Python cartoons Gilliam used to animate). Tom Waits plays an amiable devil in a bowler hat.

‘It’s Complicated’
Rated R
2 stars
Writer-director Nancy Meyers’ latest relationship comedy isn’t what the name promises at all. It’s simple, almost as simple about grown-up romance and heartache as the average Hollywood teen comedy is about youthful love and sex. That said, a simple-minded story can benefit enormously with Meryl Streep on screen for almost an entire movie. Streep is charming as a divorced woman in an affair with her remarried ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and a flirtation with a new man (Steve Martin). Too bad Streep puts on this nice show for such a superficial story, and for that matter, too bad for Baldwin, Martin and the rest of an earnest supporting cast led by John Krasinski. Meyers serves up fluff as light as the pastries Streep’s character bakes for a living, a story to make divorced people wish their broken marriages and the ugly aftermath could be as fun and frolicsome as this.

‘Sherlock Holmes’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
Robert Downey Jr. is so NOT Sherlock Holmes. That’s not a hindrance — in fact, it’s a big help — as he and Guy Ritchie bring Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian-age detective into the modern world. Enough of the trappings are left in their brawn-over-brain action romp to make Downey a reasonably faithful embodiment of Holmes. And of course, this is Downey, whose career resurgence rests on his ability to make the most unlikely role his own. The movie’s big failing is the drab story, a bit of nonsense revolving around a secret society and potentially supernatural doings. But Ritchie compensates with exhilarating action, and the movie offers engaging interplay among Downey and Jude Law as Holmes sidekick Watson, Rachel McAdams as the woman in the detective’s life, Eddie Marsan as Scotland Yard Inspector Lestrade and Mark Strong as the bad guy.

‘Avatar’
Rated PG-13
2 1/2 stars
James Cameron’s 3-D epic has all the smack of a Film Not To Miss — a movie whose effects are clearly revolutionary, a spectacle that millions will find adventure in. But it nevertheless feels unsatisfying and somehow lacks the pulse of a truly alive film. The plot is a little like the American frontier circa the 1800s, only transposed to the year 2154 on the faraway moon Pandora, the home of Native American-like, aqua blue, 10-foot tall creatures called the Na’vi. Arriving are imperialistic humans to plunder, and scientists to study. Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) leads a team that explores in Na’vi bodies, avatars, controlled remotely. A sense of discovery — of Cameron’s digital world of Pandora, of the impressive techno-filmmaking — makes “Avatar” often thrilling. The environmentalist and anti-war messages resonate with contemporary troubles, but they also seem odd coming from such a swaggering behemoth of a movie. One senses Cameron’s zest lies in the battle, not in peace. With Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana.

‘Nine’
Rated PG-13
2 stars
On a scale of 1 to 10, this musical update of Federico Fellini’s masterpiece “8 1/2” comes in somewhere around a 5, maybe 5 1/2. Despite stars with enough Academy Awards hardware to start their own metal works, Rob Marshall’s adaptation of the stage musical ends up as an amiable but muddled music-video rehash of Fellini’s study of a filmmaker adrift in personal and creative turmoil. The crises of a pampered, fawned-over filmmaker (Daniel Day-Lewis) come off as trifling as he meanders from real life to grand fantasy sequences with co-stars Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren, Judi Dench and Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie. The musical interludes are overly stagy and not well integrated into the story. It feels as though the actresses lined up single-file waiting for their big number, each woman getting a chance to croon a little something about the meaning of their man’s life before wandering off into the background of the film.
— Associated Press