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By Inlander Staff


*** About Schmidt -- Jack Nicholson delivers a different-than-usual tour-de-force in this seriocomic road movie about a just-retired and just-widowed fellow who tries to make his aloof daughter see that she's marrying the wrong guy. (ES) Rated: R





** Anger Management -- When it comes to the story, the script and the direction, just about everything is wrong with this movie. Adam Sandler is a nice guy loser who is supposedly suppressing a bunch of rage. Jack Nicholson is his anger therapist, a doctor with a very strange approach to his work. Neither is believable. (ES) Rated PG-13





**** Apollo 13 -- Ron Howard's 1995 study of bad luck in the space program gets a booster rocket-like push up into the world of big screen movies with this transfer to IMAX. Mechanical failures and emotional shortcomings during the 1970 flight to the moon and back are at the forefront of this adventure film; a solid, ensemble performance; directing scope that ranges from epic grandeur to subtle touches. (ES) Rated PG





Bend it Like Beckham -- More than anything, Jess (Parminder Nagra) wants to be a soccer superstar like her idol David Beckham. Her traditional Indian family wants her to lay off the soccer practice and take up her sari like a good future Indian bride. But Jess is growing up in London, her best friend loves soccer as much as she does and her new coach is a handsome lad (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Can Jess bend the rules and follow her dreams without upsetting her family? Rated: PG-13





*** Better Luck Tomorrow -- Justin Lin's second is a kicky original. With its quartet of Chinese-American high schoolers peer-pressured into increasingly deadly crime, Lin's entertaining descent into a yet-unseen hell is a worthy successor to Scorsese's Mean Streets and Goodfellas. It's the best teen movie since Donnie Darko. Rated: R (RP)





*** Bringing Down the House -- This all starts out looking like a formulaic comedy about a square white guy (Steve Martin) and a hip black gal (Queen Latifah). But don't be fooled -- this film soon becomes a fresh and funny story. (ES) Rated PG-13





* Bulletproof Monk -- Any bad joke would be better than this awful movie. Chow Yun-Fat is the monk who's been protecting a powerful scroll for 60 years (the kind that Nazis come after to take over the world), and Sean William Scott is the street thief -- the man who, of course, the Monk chooses to mentor and succeed him. (ES) Rated PG-13





*** Chicago -- Torn stockings and heavily mascaraed eyes abound in this tale of two music-hall vixens (Catherine Zeta-Jones and Ren & eacute;e Zellweger) vying for public attention in the Windy City. Richard Gere shows that he can sing (and tap dance) as the lawyer out to make a buck defending them from murder charges. (Marty Demarest) Rated: PG-13





*** Confidence -- You'll need a scorecard to keep track of the twists and turns and of who's doublecrossing whom, but this tale of grifters trying to rip off the rich moves along in a stylish atmosphere of colorful set design and even more colorful characters. Entertaining and confusing at the same time. (ES) Rated: R





Coral Reef Adventure -- Think of it as a way to explore all 1,300 miles of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, but without the danger of those pesky shark attacks. With a strong conservation message throughout, viewers get the sense of swimming along with some of the world's top self-described "fish nerds" in search of new species. Not rated





** The Core -- The Earth is in trouble again, this time because its core has stopped spinning, resulting in firestorms, international landmarks toppling and pigeons flying amok. The solution is to jump-start it by tunneling down to its core and setting off explosions. (ES) Rated PG-13





*** The Good Thief -- A remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's suave 1955 masterpiece of effortless cool, Bob the Gambler, The Good Thief is a snazzy, cosmopolitan lark steeped in themes of fakery and duplicity, suiting Neil Jordan's wildly eclectic career. Nick Nolte, with more gravel in his voice than a Texas highway, plays weary yet cheery Bob Montagnet, a Marseilles career gambler and sometimes heroin user. Nolte plays him to the craggy, leonine hilt, a chivalrous savage. (RP) Rated: R





*** Holes -- The popular kids novel gets Disneyized, but the story's hint of toughness is intact. A teenager is framed for a theft and sent to a reform school summer camp, where the evil warden (Sigourney Weaver) forces all the kids to dig deep holes out in the desert. (ES) Rated PG





House of a Thousand Corpses -- Rural Texas is as good a place as any for this freaky homage to 1970s exploitation films. Written and directed by Rob Zombie, the narrative follows two couples searching for a madman known only as "Dr. Satan." Rated: R





*** Identity -- A plot twist is a terrible thing to waste: James Mangold's latest is a taut yet playful what-the-hell-was-that thriller, as if Agatha Christie wrote The Usual Suspects. The cast members, including John Cusack, Ray Liotta and Amanda Peet, have fun re-imagining clich & eacute;d horror-film characters. Rated: R (RP)





It Runs In the Family -- Although the title sounds a trifle sweet, this much-hyped Douglas family project was initially titled Family Jewels, and before that, A Smack in the Puss. As might be expected, the Douglas men -- Kirk, Michael and Cameron -- are three generations of fightin', lovin', lady-killin' masculinity, all trying to get along with each other. Rated: PG-13





*** Lewis & amp; Clark -- The IMAX folks have packed a lot into this vivid account of the two adventurers' travels across the American wilderness. Narrator Jeff Bridges does pretty much all the speaking, while actors play out the scenes. And those scenes are played out in breathtakingly beautiful settings, spellbinding on the giant screen. Much of the story gets into details of important characters -- such as Indian guide Sacagawea -- who were left out of our history books. (ES) Unrated





The Lizzie McGuire Movie -- Based on the hugely popular Disney Channel TV series, The Lizzie McGuire Movie follows the junior high student (Hilary Duff) through the various clothing crises, social missteps, romantic entanglements and family annoyances that constitute her daily life. But then she gets to go to Italy for the summer and, in the process, gets a better understanding of herself and her world. Rated: PG





*** Malibu's Most Wanted -- Brad Gluckman's father (Ryan O'Neal) is running for governor of California. But he realizes that the antics of Brad (Jamie Kennedy), who wants only to live the black, hip-hop lifestyle, might be a liability to his campaign. This is an alternately hilarious and sweet and slightly edgy movie. (ES) Rated PG-13





*** Phone Booth -- Colin Farrell is Stu Shepard, a PR hustler in today's New York inching his way toward an affair with a young waitress (Katie Holmes). But someone's got his number. (RP) Rated: R





**** The Pianist -- Adrien Brody gets his juiciest role to date as the real-life Wladyslaw Szpilman, the Polish concert pianist whose life was shattered, along with the rest of the Jewish population, during the Nazi invasion of his country. Roman Polanski's direction is sure and steady. (ES) Rated R





The Real Cancun -- All the potential nudity of Girls Gone Wild with the behind-the-scenes bickering of Survivor? Reality filmmaking just doesn't get any more salacious than this. Rated: R





**** Spirited Away -- Spirited Away is the year's best film. When her parents are transformed into swine, Chihiro is trapped in a mystical bathhouse where the spirits of things like radishes and rivers come to cleanse themselves of their encounters with humans. In English. Rated: PG (Marty Demarest)





**** The Two Towers -- This magnificent sequel to last year's magnificent original welcomes back most of the same characters (including a new, improved Gandalf), and features many new ones, with the CGI creation of the hideous and chilling Gollum standing out. (ES) Rated PG-13





What a Girl Wants -- Amanda Bynes plays an American teenager who travels to London to see the father she's never known (Colin Firth). Of course he's descended from aristocracy and she's as American as they come. Rated: PG





**** X2: X-Men United -- Director Bryan Singer returns, with the main cast intact, along with a couple of new faces -- most notably Alan Cumming as the teleporting, Bible-spouting Nightcrawler -- to continue the story of good mutants and bad mutants and their struggle with humans who don't want them around. The sequel is bigger, better, funnier, sexier and more violent than the original. The past of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) starts to become clear, and his climactic fight with Yuriko aka Deathstrike (Kelly Hu) achieves moments of screen greatness. (ES) Rated PG-13





**** Don't Miss It *** Worth $7 ** Wait For The Video * Save Your Money





& lt;i & Capsule reviews are written by Ed Symkus (ES) and Ray Pride (RP), unless otherwise noted. & lt;/i &





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Publication date: 05/08/03