Movie Guide and Film Series Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. "ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS" (PG, 1:32) Adults who remember this musical cartoon franchise created by Ross Bagdasarian Sr. in 1958 may derive fleeting amusement from this update, which concerns the efforts of the title characters" surrogate dad, Dave Seville (Jason Lee), to rescue them from the clutches of a perfidious record executive (a delightfully despicable, movie-stealing David Cross). Kids may find less to connect with: The digitally animated heroes are eclipsed by their adult, live-action co-stars, a fatal mistake. Rent the DVD, or watch it with your children on a plane flight. Andy Webster ★ "THE BAND'S VISIT" (PG-13, 1:29, in Arabic, English and Hebrew) The Israeli writer and director Eran Kolirin wrenches comedy out of intense melancholia in his beautifully played story about eight Egyptian musicians stranded in the Israeli desert. "THE BANK JOB" (R, 1:50) A wham-bam caper flick, efficiently directed by Roger Donaldson, that fancifully revisits the mysterious whos and speculative hows of a 1971 London bank heist. With Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows. Dargis "BE KIND REWIND" (PG-13, 1:41) Michel Gondry's sweet and lackadaisical new film pays tribute to movie love, not as a grand aesthetic passion but rather as an antidote for boredom. Jack Black and Mos Def are a pair of loafers who recreate well-known films (e.g., "Ghostbusters" and "Driving Miss Daisy") on videotape. Their art, like Mr. Gondry's, is both silly and inspiring. ★ "BLINDSIGHT" (PG, 1:44, in Tibetan) Filmed primarily in and around the cascading Tibetan Himalayas, Lucy Walker's astonishing documentary follows six blind Tibetan teenagers as they attempt to scale the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri peak on the north side of Mount Everest. The film is at its strongest and most complex when humanitarian and competitive goals collide, and the raw beauty of the surroundings dwarfs every human ambition. ★ "BOARDING GATE" (No rating, 93 minutes) A casually beautifully, preposterously plotted, elliptical thriller from the French director Olivier Assayas starring the fascinating Italian actress Asia Argento as a woman in trouble. "CARAMEL" (PG, 1:36, in Arabic and French) Set in a Beirut beauty salon, Nicole Labaki's debut feature presents a charming, if somewhat familiar, tableau of female friendship and mild melodrama. "CITY OF MEN" (R, 1:51, in Portuguese) The companion piece (not strictly a sequel) to "City of God," the Brazilian hit about youth gangs in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, is a warmer-hearted melodrama built around the friendship of two 18-year-old boys from the favelas, both brought up without fathers, making their way into manhood. ★ "CJ7" (PG, 1:26, in Cantonese) A devilishly entertaining curveball, "CJ7" is "E.T." as reimagined by the premier clown of Chinese cinema, Stephen Chow. Here he plays an impoverished widower whose young son (the 9-year-old actress Xu Jiao) befriends a tiny alien with magical powers. Ceding the limelight to his young co-star, Mr. Chow devotes his considerable creative energy to unexpected scenes that showcase his bizarre sense of humor. The violence is as exaggerated as vintage Hanna-Barbera, but the film's gentleness of spirit and frequent flights of fancy ensure that no child will be left behind. Catsoulis "COLLEGE ROAD TRIP" (G, 1:23) Eyes popping and mouths agape, Martin Lawrence and Raven-Symoné mug their way through "College Road Trip" as a disturbingly doting father and his fed-up daughter en route to her college interview. As Dad crashes a wedding and storms a sorority house, you'll be thankful that the movie's target audience is too young to have heard of Freud. "THE COUNTERFEITERS" (R, 1:38, in German) Stefan Rudowitsky's film, winner of this year's Oscar for best foreign-language film, is based on the true story of concentration camp inmates involved in a Nazi scheme to counterfeit Allied currencies. Karl Markovics gives a ferociously concentrated performance as Salomon Sorowisch, a man who brings his underworld code of ethics and his professional pride from Berlin to the Sachsenhausen camp. Note: when asked if this deserved a star, tony replied: i think not. it's good but I don't love it as much as the academy did (Scott) "DEFINITELY, MAYBE" (PG-13, 1:52) This unusually smart, thoroughly charming romantic comedy follows a nice guy's involvement with three women, one of whom he will marry. Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz and Elizabeth Banks are all wonderful as the candidates, as is Ryan Reynolds as the guy. 8"THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY" (PG-13, 1:52, in French) Julian Schnabel's film, about Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French magazine editor paralyzed by a stroke, is a marvel of empathy and imagination. It is also a celebration of French sensualism and an examination of the nature of consciousness. "DOOMSDAY" (R, 1:45) In this science fiction adventure from the director Neil Marshall ("The Descent"), set 30 years after a plague-ridden Glasgow was sealed off from the rest of Britain, a stoic, one-eyed mercenary named Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) leads a mission into the city, hoping to locate a doctor-turned-political-leader (Malcolm McDowell), find out how he managed to survive the plague along with his followers, and apply his lessons to London, where the virus has surfaced. What Eden finds is a savage, nearly medieval society of man-eating punks; post-apocalyptic mayhem ensues. Mr. Marshall aims to pay tribute to "The Road Warrior," "Escape from New York" and other dystopian science fiction movies, but except for some inventive music cues (Fine Young Cannibals accompanying a bacchanal thrown by fine young cannibals, for instance), "Doomsday" rarely aspires to more than trashy time-waster status. Matt Zoller Seitz (G, 1:28) Much better than the recent live-action Dr. Seuss adaptations, this animated feature builds impressively on Seuss's visual whimsy, but overloads the story - of a noble elephant protecting a tiny world - with irrelevant pop-culture clutter. Jim Carrey's clowning, jabbering performance as Horton is especially annoying. "DRILLBIT TAYLOR" (PG-13, 1:42) Owen Wilson plays a homeless man hired to protect some high school geeks from bullies. A waste of his time and yours. "THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS" (No rating, 2:17, in French) Based on Balzac's 1834 short novel and set against the French Restoration, Jacques Rivette's nearly impeccable interpretation traces how a passionate affair of the heart (Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu play the lovers) curdles into cruelty and obsession. (Dargis) "FOOL'S GOLD" (PG-13, 1:52) Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey go swimming. ★ "4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS" (No rating, 1:53, in Romanian) In this ferocious, unsentimental film from the Romanian writer and director Cristian Mungiu, the camera doesn't follow the action, it expresses consciousness itself. This consciousness - alert to the world and insistently alive - is embodied by a young university student who in the late 1980s helps her roommate with an illegal abortion in Ceausescu's Romania. It's a pitiless, violent story that in its telling becomes a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement. "THE GRAND" (R, 1:44) A disposable, moderately humorous distraction directed by Zak Penn about a high-stakes Vegas poker game played by, among others, Woody Harrelson and Cheryl Hines. "I AM LEGEND" (PG-13, 1:40) Will Smith, as the sole surviving human resident of Manhattan, paints the town in fine style in this postapocalyptic zombie action thriller. It falls apart in the last act, but Mr. Smith and the special effects make it quite watchable up until then. (Scott) ★ "I'M NOT THERE" (R, 2:15) Hurling a Molotov cocktail into the biopic factory, Todd Haynes uses six different actors and an astonishing range of looks and styles to meditate on the life, work and cultural impact of Bob Dylan. Inspired and inexhaustible. "IRINA PALM" (R, 1:43) A fairly standard British naughty-granny movie about a widow who finds cash and fulfillment as a sex worker. It rises slightly above its clichés, thanks to the quiet realism and sly wit of Marianne Faithfull as the granny in question. "JUMPER" (PG-13, 1:30) A barely coherent genre mishmash from the usually reliable Doug Liman ("The Bourne Identity") about a guy who transports himself across the globe at will. Next! ★ "JUNO" (PG-13, 1:31) A sharply written and acted coming-of-age comedy, starring the remarkable Ellen Page as Juno MacGuff, a teenager who deals with her unanticipated pregnancy in unexpected ways. "LOVE SONGS" (No rating, 1:35, in French) A musical, a melodrama, a modern sex comedy - this new film from Christophe Honoré is less than the sum of its parts, but charming nonetheless. Its view of Paris is compounded equally of Nouvelle Vague nostalgia and an up-to-the-minute sense of today's French youth, in perpetual motion from song to song and bed to bed. (Scott) "MARRIED LIFE" (PG-13, 1:30) A comedy of manners merged with a suspenseful psychological thriller, this movie aspires to be a hybrid of the sort that Alfred Hitchcock polished to perfection in the age of sexual subtext and subterfuge. When to shudder and when to smirk: as you watch this sly marital fable of secrets, lies and homicidal intent, you're never sure of what your reaction should be. Holden "MEAT LOAF: IN SEARCH OF PARADISE" (No rating, 1:28) The subtitle "In Search of Paradise," for a documentary about Meat Loaf's 2007 tour, refers to that rocker's classic single, the hormone-saturated high school epic "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." But it doubles as an artistic credo. The film's director, Bruce David Klein, portrays his subject - who was 59 during shooting - as an obsessive, self-punishing performer, striving in vain to put on a live show that matches the visions in his head. Seitz "MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY" (PG-13, 1:32) The particular screwball screen magic Amy Adams commands in this weightless period fairy tale, based on the novel by Winifred Watson, hasn't been this intense since the heyday of Jean Arthur. She helps turn a little nothing of a movie into a little something. (Holden) "NEVER BACK DOWN" (PG-13, 1:53) Manifesting all the nuance and insight of a music video, this "Fight Club" for high-schoolers follows an angry teenager (Sean Faris) as he discovers the therapeutic benefits of breaking faces. Playing like a pop-psychology seminar on fathers and sons, this lunkheaded movie accelerates and decelerates, as if controlled by a director (Jeff Wadlow) in the grip of competing medications. "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN" (R, 2:02) Mean, violent and impeccable, Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of a pulpy, compact novel by Cormac McCarthy lives and breathes in the central performances of Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem, who chase one another, $2 million and metaphysical truth through the Texas back country. "THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL" (PG-13, 1:55) Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson star in a salacious slog about two hot blue bloods who ran amok and partly unclothed in the court of Henry VIII. ★ "PARANOID PARK" (R, 1:18) Gus Van Sant's haunting, voluptuously beautiful portrait of a teenage boy who, after being suddenly caught in midflight, falls to earth, is a modestly scaled triumph without a false or wasted moment. "PLANET B-BOY" (No rating, 1:35) Early in this documentary by Benson Lee, an experienced street dancer asserts that break dancing is "as legitimate as any dance that has ever existed." This brisk feature makes his case, showing international teams of break dancers - or b-boys - battling to win best-in-the-nation status in their home countries, then going on to compete in the 2005 world finals at the Volkswagenhalle in Braunschweig, Germany. Choppy editing prevents us from fully appreciating the dancers" grace; a couple of parent-child reconciliation stories seem shoehorned in to add "heart." Still, from moment to moment, "Planet B-Boy" is fun, sometimes thrilling and packed with illuminating details. "SEMI-PRO" (R, 1:30) In this 1970s-rooted sports comedy, the latest in his series of wildly successful movies about demented man-children, Will Ferrell plays the owner-coach-promoter-star of the Tropics, a Flint, Mich., team that's part of the soon-to-be-defunct American Basketball Association. The movie is a raunchy, R-rated goof that doesn't cohere as a comedy but contains many hilarious moments, an amusing cast that includes Woody Harrelson and Andre Benjamin as basketball stars, and a wealth of period detail worthy of "Boogie Nights." (PG-13, 1:49) In the future this saga, loaded with computer-generated imagery, about a tribe of mammoth-hunters will be enjoyable, in a campy kind of way, for its earnest, B-movie dumbness. At the moment, it's just dumb. ★ "THERE WILL BE BLOOD" (R, 2:38) Paul Thomas Anderson's epic American nightmare tells a story of greed and envy of biblical proportions, set against the backdrop of the Southern California oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no God but money in this oil-rich desert, and his messenger is Daniel Plainview, a petroleum speculator played by a monstrous and shattering Daniel Day-Lewis. "TYLER PERRY'S MEET THE BROWNS" (PG-13, 1:40) Angela Bassett supplies the acting, and the rest of the cast contributes the raucous comedy, righteous sentiment and familial warmth that make up Mr. Perry's reliable formula. And don't forget Madea, the director's plus-size, cross-dressed alter ego, who shows up briefly near the end, just to make sure the fans get their money's worth. "UNDER THE SAME MOON" (PG-13, 1:49, in Spanish and English) An "Incredible Journey" for the socially conscience-stricken, Patricia Riggen's shamelessly manipulative film places all its marketing eggs in the cute-kid basket. Following a 9-year-old Mexican boy as he journeys to Los Angeles to reunite with his mother, the movie is too busy sanctifying its protagonists and prodding our tear ducts to say anything remotely novel about immigration policies or their helpless victims. ★ "U2 3D" (G, 1:25) The musical documentary "U2 3D," which stitches together performances by this Irish rock band during a recent tour of South America, brazenly ignores the usual stipulations about making a 3-D film, to thrilling effect. The movie's directors, Mark Pellington and Catherine Owens, layer the screen with multiple planes of information: long shots and medium shots of the musicians; images of the crowd; close-up details of graphics from the big screen that the band performs in front of that make the designs abstract and merge them with the performers. Thanks to the clarity of the movie's format, digital 3-D, the result is not a confusing mishmash of images but a musical-experimental work that visually simulates the sensation of thinking. "VANTAGE POINT" (PG-13, 1:24) A gimmick (repeat the assassination of an American president over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over) in search of a point. "WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS" (PG-13, 1:54) This comedy about a talk-show host (Martin Lawrence) revisiting his relatives down South is just a shaggy diversion that gives its energetic star and its populous, accomplished supporting cast (including James Earl Jones as Papa Jenkins, Margaret Avery as Mamma{cq} Jenkins, and Cedric the Entertainer and Mo'Nique as the hero's siblings) a chance to clown around. But it's a cut above other films of its type, because every scene is packed with details that suggest that the film's writer and director, Malcolm D. Lee ("The Best Man"), is working overtime to smuggle life into formula. "THE YEAR MY PARENTS WENT ON VACATION" (No rating, 1:44) A young boy comes of age against a backdrop of political repression and soccer mania in 1970 São Paulo. Familiar, but affecting. Film Series JEAN EUSTACHE'S CIRCLE (Tuesday) Best known on these shores for his overflowing 1973 film, "The Mother and the Whore," Jean Eustache was also the author of several significant shorter works which have mostly been lost in the shadow of his towering, three-hour masterpiece. To kick off this monthlong series of films by Eustache and his close collaborators in what has been called France's "Second Wave" of revolutionary filmmakers, the Alliance Française presents a program composed of Eustache's wry short comedy "Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes" (1966) and his debut film, the 1963 "Bad Company." The French film critic Bernard Eisenshitz and Sam Di Iorio of Hunter College will discuss Eustache's work after the 7 p.m. screening. As a bonus, Jacques Rozier's very rare 1969 portrait of French youth in full flower, "Near Orouet," will also be shown. French Institute/Alliance Française, Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan, (212) 355-6100, fiaf.org; $10. Dave Kehr AN EVENING WITH WONG KAR-WAI (Thursday) With its home auditorium in Queens closed for renovation, the Museum of the Moving Image is continuing its programming in exile, beginning with this special presentation at TheTimesCenter. The most aggressively stylish of Hong Kong filmmakers, Mr. Wong will show sequences from his new, made-in-America film, "My Blueberry Nights," starring Norah Jones, Jude Law and Natalie Portman, and will be interviewed on stage by the museum's chief curator, David Schwartz. The director Ang Lee ("Lust, Caution") will introduce the program. TheTimesCenter, 242 West 41st Street, Manhattan, (718) 784-4520, movingimage.us; $17. Kehr FILMS BY FRANS ZWARTJES (Tuesday) A chance to discover the avant-garde work of this Dutch filmmaker, musician, painter, sculptor and violin-maker through newly restored prints from the Netherlands Filmmuseum, introduced by the curator Simona Monizza. The program includes a new 35-millimeter print of "Living" (1971), Zwartjes's own favorite among his work, in which he tours his new home in The Hague with a wide-angle lens that suggests his alienation from a space he has yet to inhabit. Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org; $8. NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS CLASSICS (Monday through Thursday) While the 2008 edition of New Directors/New Films, the long-running festival (37 years!) presented jointly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, continues its run at MoMA and the Walter Reade Theater, the Film Society is also offering festival greatest-hits program. This series of afternoon double features (a ticket to the 1 p.m. screening also entitles you to the 3 p.m. film) begins with Kevin Smith's "Clerks" (1994) and "Dogma" (1999) on Monday, and continues with Todd Solondz's "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (1995) and "Storytelling" (2001) on Tuesday; Charles Burnett's "My Brother's Wedding" (1983) and "To Sleep with Anger" (1990) on Wednesday; and Lodge Kerrigan's "Clean, Shaven" (1993) and "Keane" (2004) on Thursday. Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 875-5600, filmlinc.org; $11.