Movie Guide

New in theaters I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (PG-13)

Director: Dennis Dugan. With Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Steve Buscemi, Dan Aykroyd. (110 min.)

Adam Sandler and Kevin James play courageous Brooklyn firefighters and best friends in this comedy that seems designed to be as bad as it can be. Because red tape prevents Kevin James's Larry, a widower, from naming his two kids as his life-insurance beneficiaries, he cooks up a scheme to get around the problem by marrying Adam Sandler's Chuck, a notorious lady's man who owes his partner big time for having once saved his life. Their domestic partnership sham eventually falls apart – although the movie falls apart much sooner than that. Grade: F
– Peter Rainer

Sunshine (R)

Director: Danny Boyle. With Michelle Yeoh, Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Troy Garity. (107 min.)

It's 2057 and the sun is dying. A solar winter is freezing Earth. (So much for global warming.) In order to reignite the sun, a team of astronauts is on course to deliver a nuclear payload into the sun, a mission that already failed seven years earlier with the doomed Icarus I spaceship. When the current crew, which includes Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, and Cliff Curtis, picks up faint distress signals from the Icarus, the stage is set for a nightmarish rescue mission. Director Danny Boyle gets some tension going, and, as the crew members are eliminated one by one, a cosmic despair sets in. But too much of "Sunshine" is like a cross between a middling "Alien" movie and "Solaris" (the woozy Steven Soderbergh version). Grade: B–
– P.R.

Vitus (PG)

Director: Fredi M. Murer. With Fabrizio Borsani, Teo Gheorghiu. (120 min.)

Like "Joshua," now in theatrical release, "Vitus" is about a piano prodigy confronting his weirdness. But the two films' outcomes couldn't be more different. The title character of "Joshua" inflicted vengeance on his clueless family. Vitus von Holzen (played by real-life prodigies Teo Gheorghiu and Fabrizio Borsani) seeks balance by hanging out with his sweetly nonconformist grandpa (Bruno Ganz), who inspires him to be his own person, whatever it takes, and to become a sort of a parent to his own mom and dad. This is a touching and inspirational fantasy, buoyed by splendid music and considerable humor.Grade: B+
– M.K. Terrell

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
QR Code to Movie Guide
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0720/p13s01-almo.html
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe