Opening Films

by INLANDER STAFF & r & & r & THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI & r & & r & A colonialist Brit and would-be journalist goes to China during the communist revolution in search of a story. Instead, he finds a school of orphans in need of saving, which causes him to rejigger his pre-conceptions of Chinese culture and rethink his motivations for going to China in the first place. (LB) Rated R





HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY


Director Guillermo Del Toro is a man of tremendous, horrific, fantastic vision and also a pretty marketable filmmaker, which makes him perhaps the ideal choice to helm the Hellboy movies. Based on a popular though idiosyncratic comic book series, the Hellboy franchise needs all kinds of rad-looking demons portrayed in a cinematic language of cynical foreboding that will still rake in the box office dollars. (LB) Rated PG-13





JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH


Be careful, you'll poke your eye out. At least that's how you'll feel when objects come flying at you in this updated 3D version of the Jules Verne novel. A scientist (Brendan Fraser) and his nephew (Josh Hutcherson) go to Iceland to study volcanoes, hire a guide (Anita Briem), and fall down to the ... well, you know where. Acting and directing are sub-par, the story is kinda ridiculous, and many of the visual effects are hokey. But quite a few of them really will make you duck in your seat. If that's what you're into. (ES) Rated PG





MEET DAVE


Eddie Murphy is back doing multiple roles again, the namesake character, who is actually a robot or a ship or something that houses and is controlled by a ton of little aliens that look and act exactly like Eddie Murphy. We imagine their planet to be the kind of place that was a scream to visit 20 years ago but that has become less and less funny with each passing year until it's become, like Murphy's live action films, the kind of place where humor goes to die. (LB) Rated PG