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``Stomp the Yard'' (PG-13, 1 hr., 55 min.)
Gloriously energetic, synchronized ``stepping'' dance numbers nearly raise this story of a troubled inner-city kid who makes the tough transition to college above its many cliches -- nearly. Yet ``Stomp the Yard'' will win over plenty of high-schoolers with its exuberance. A bit too full of strong language and macho posturing for middle-schoolers, it depicts a street brawl and a fatal shooting and other much milder scuffles, and contains considerable midrange profanity and slangish racial slurs. There is a lot of mild sexual innuendo, including an implied overnight tryst between college students, suggestive dancing by girls, rapper-style crotch-grabbing by guys and lingering shots of girls' jean-clad behinds.
``Stomp the Yard'' opens at a street dancing contest in Los Angeles, after which gifted dancer DJ (Columbus Short) sees his brother shot dead during a brawl they're involved in. DJ avoids jail by agreeing to go to his aunt (Valarie Pettiford) and uncle (Harry J. Lennix) in Atlanta. He enrolls in a historically black university and works part-time as a gardener for his uncle, who is head groundskeeper there. The snobbery he encounters from the mostly middle-class students (the film's most interesting theme) makes DJ decide to show them all, using his street dancing skills to compete in the fraternities' stepping competitions. (Stepping is a century-old style of dance first inspired by African gumboot dancing.) He also woos the lovely April (Meagan Good), whose dad (Allan Louis) runs the school and wants her to marry the rich, vain stepping champ, Grant (Darrin Henson).
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``Alpha Dog'' (R, 1 hr., 57 min.)
Someone should sign up the talented cast of ``Alpha Dog'' for Overactors Anonymous (wish there were such an organization!), because scenery gets seriously chewed in this profane, lurid and soulless flick about America's youth gone sour with drugs, casual sex, violent video games and general brainlessness. Writer/director Nick Cassavetes threw nuance out the window on this one. The profanity, explicit sexual language and vicious ethnic slurs, depiction of drug use and sexual situations with nudity all make the film inappropriate for high-schoolers under 17. So does a climactic murder. There are also window-shattering fights.
Loosely based on real events and presented as a pseudo-documentary and in long flashbacks, ``Alpha Dog'' examines how a cocky teenage pot dealer named Johnny (Emile Hirsch), the son of a mob-connected tough guy (Bruce Willis) in the Los Angeles 'burbs, gets even with Jake (Ben Foster), a hotheaded pothead who owes him money, by kidnapping Jake's 15-year-old brother (Anton Yelchin). Along for the ride at various times are semi-nice guy Frankie (singer Justin Timberlake), and a Johnny-worshipping loser named Elvis (Shawn Hatosy). The anguished parents (Sharon Stone and David Thornton) suspect Jake as the cause.
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``Letters from Iwo Jima'' (R, 2 hrs., 20 min.) (LIMITED RELEASE)
Director Clint Eastwood, with great compassion and nuance, views the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese point of view in ``Letters from Iwo Jima,'' just as he explored the American experience of it in ``Flags of Our Fathers'' (R, 2006). Although the battle footage is gory, the film's rich characterizations and simple humaneness, as well as its spare, timeless visual style, make it something high-school cinema buffs 16 and older ought to see, unless they cannot stomach realistic war films. Though less bloody than ``Flags of Our Fathers,'' this film shows spurting, newly limbless stumps and soldiers on fire. In one shattering (though more smokey than bloody) scene, Japanese soldiers commit suicide using hand grenades. (The pressure for honor suicides among Japanese troops is a key theme.) Prisoners are murdered by both sides in brief scenes, but there are also acts of mercy. A horse lies mortally wounded. The dialogue -- nearly all in Japanese with English subtitles -- has some profanity. A few officers drink.
``Letters from Iwo Jima'' follows several real people who represent a range of ranks and attitudes, all expertly, feelingly acted. Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya) is a good-hearted baker who just wants to survive. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), an honorable, sensitive man who likes America, conceives of the tunnel system that holds off U.S. forces for weeks. Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), a famed Olympic equestrian, helps a wounded American soldier. Lieutenant Ito (Shido Nakamura), an old-school soldier, strikes his men and demands suicides when defeat looks imminent. A scene in which Baron Nishi translates for his men an American mother's letter to her now-dead boy is profound in its humanity.
P.S. FOR 16 AND OLDER: It would be a fine thing, after seeing ``Letters from Iwo Jima,'' to read the great novel ``All Quiet on the Western Front'' by Erich Maria Remarque and to see the groundbreaking 1930 film based on it. It is about Germans fighting against the English, French and Americans in the trenches of World War I.
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BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME
-- 6 AND OLDER:
``Charlotte's Web'' G (Entertaining, if not sublime, semi-Hollywoodized adaptation of E.B. White's beloved 1952 book -- live-action, with many computer-generated effects -- about a piglet, Wilbur (voice of Dominic Scott Kay), rescued from slaughter (because he's a runt) by a little farm girl, Fern (Dakota Fanning), then befriended by a spider, Charlotte (Julia Roberts), geese Gussy and Golly (Oprah Winfrey and Cedric the Entertainer), cows Bitsy and Betsy (Kathy Bates and Reba McEntire), spider-phobic horse, Ike (Robert Redford), and the rat, Templeton (Steve Buscemi); Charlotte saves Wilbur from a new threat of slaughter by weaving ``some pig'' into her web; humans deem it a miracle; Charlotte's passing still brings a tear. Mildly crude barnyard expressions; cow-flatulence joke; subtle references to the killing of pigs, including Fern's father carrying an ax, and the smokehouse.)
-- 7AND OLDER:
``Happily N'Ever After'' PG (Computer-animated sendup of fairy tales has a cute premise about Cinderella (voice of Sarah Michelle Gellar) carrying a torch for the moronic Prince (Patrick Warburton) of Fairy Tale Land while his lowly servant, Rick (Freddie Prinze Jr.), loves her; but film's unfunny, sitcomish sensibility coarsens and ruins it; Cinderella's wicked stepmom (Sigourney Weaver) usurps the vacationing Wizard's magic and causes villains to win in every fairy tale. Crass phrases such as ``screw up,'' ``pain in the butt,'' and ``a butt the size of a shopping mall''; toilet humor; scary bits include glowering wolves, trolls, witches on smoke-belching broomsticks; wicked stepmom remarks how nice it is when girls get eaten by wolves; plot giveaways: purists beware of the Giant from ``Jack and the Beanstalk'' squishing Jack under foot, Rapunzel falling out of her tower, Rumplestiltskin taking the baby.)
``Night at the Museum'' PG (Enjoyable, if under-realized and internally illogical comic romp (live-action with-computer-generated effects) about a shlump (Ben Stiller) who gets a job as the night guard at New York's Natural History Museum; his shifty, aged predecessors (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs) don't tell him that the exhibits -- a T. rex skeleton, Attila the Hun, Sacajawea, Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams, having a bully time), miniature Roman legions, Civil War soldiers and cowboys (Owen Wilson in a cameo) -- all come alive and tear up the place after dark; he must rein in the chaos, keep his job, impress his son (Jake Cherry) and woo a cute tour guide (Carla Gugino). Little kids may jump at the dinosaur chasing Stiller, the Huns grabbing him; toilet humor; a few rude but unprofane expressions.)
-- 10 AND OLDER:
``Miss Potter'' PG (LIMITED RELEASE) (Staid but absorbing ``Masterpiece Theatre''-esque portrait of Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger) as a slightly eccentric unmarried upper-middle-class lady in 1890s London and how she overcame Victorian prejudices about women authors and artists and got her delightfully illustrated and written Peter Rabbit tales published, then fell in love with her editor (Ewan McGregor). One strongish epithet; themes about death and grieving and a parent trying to squelch an adult child's dreams. For kids with good attention spans and tastes ranging beyond pop culture; Potter's illustrations come to life at times, but only briefly.)
-- PG-13s:
``Stomp the Yard'' (NEW) (Cliched college saga uplifted by exuberant dancing; a Los Angeles inner-city teen and ace street dancer (Columbus Short) loses his brother in a brawl and is sent to live with Atlanta relatives; he enters an historically black university and works part-time for his uncle (Harry J. Lennix), the school's groundskeeper; snobby students look down on him; he enters the fraternities' big ``stepping'' competition (a synchronized dance style inspired by African gumboot dancing) and aims to impress a girl (Meagan Good), overcome the dislike of her dad (Allan Louis) and win her from her rich, arrogant boyfriend (Darrin Henson). Fatal shooting; theme of loss; midrange profanity; racial slurs; lots of mildish sexual innuendo -- implied overnight tryst between college students, suggestive dancing by girls, rapper-style crotch-grabbing by guys, lingering shots of young women's jeans-clad derrieres. Too much strong language and macho posturing for middle-schoolers.)
``Code Name: The Cleaner'' (NEW) (Cedric the Entertainer in lame, unamusing comic thriller-by-committee about an Everyman who awakens in a hotel room next to a dead body, with no memory of who he is or why he's there; a gorgeous blonde (Nicollette Sheridan) tells him he's rich and she's his wife; a feisty waitress (Lucy Liu) claims to be his girlfriend and gives him a lowlier picture of himself; he believes he must be a secret agent. Midrange profanity; a woman in scanty underwear, dancing suggestively; other sexual innuendo; homophobic humor; digestive humor; gunfire; martial arts fights. More appropriate for high-schoolers.)
``Freedom Writers'' (Solid drama mostly overcomes cliches in fact-based story of Erin Gruwell (a cleareyed Hilary Swank in pearls), who taught high-school English in the early 1990s to ``unteachable'' teens from tough, gang-ridden neighborhoods in Long Beach, Calif.; trying to defuse racial and gang tensions in class, she gets students to keep personal journals, talk about violence and prejudice in their own lives and read ``Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl''; they meet Holocaust survivors and slowly gain empathy, confidence, academic focus. Nongraphic, but intense portrayals of shootings, including a little boy playing disastrously with a gun; fights; verbal references to a girl and her mother being beaten; some profanity; racial slurs. More for high-schoolers.)
``Dreamgirls'' (Fun, high-gloss, well-sung and long-awaited film adaptation of 1981 Broadway hit musical about the tempestuous rise of a 1960s girl group inspired by the Supremes; Beyonce Knowles as the pretty Deena, Anika Noni Rose as the naive Lorrell and terrific Jennifer Hudson as the talented, temperamental Effie; Jamie Foxx as their machiavellian manager; Eddie Murphy as the eccentric soul singer who hires them as a backup trio; much cultural history of the era neatly tossed in. Drug abuse; implied extramarital affairs; unwed motherhood; male singer strips to his skivvies to perform on television; mildish profanity, mostly the S-word. OK for most teens, but likely to attract musical theater buffs and ``American Idol'' fans eager to see one-time losing contestant Hudson triumph.)
``The Pursuit of Happyness'' (Fine, refreshingly un-Hollywood film takes unvarnished look at being one paycheck away from the street; Will Smith as a down-on-his-luck family man scrambling to get out of debt and survive a non-paying stock brokerage internship leading perhaps to a real job in San Francisco, circa 1981; Smith's real son Jaden plays his film son, with Thandie Newton as the despondent wife who leaves them; loosely based on entrepreneur Chris Gardner's life. Rare profanity, including the F-word as a graffito and spoken by a child; smoking; a disintegrating marriage; giving blood for cash; father and son spend nights in a homeless shelter, a subway restroom; shoving and shouting but no real violence. Teens.)
-- R's:
``Alpha Dog'' (NEW) (Profane, lurid, soulless, nuance-free potboiler about America's youth gone sour with drugs, casual sex, violent video games and brainlessness; loosely based on a real incident, story follows a teenage suburban Los Angeles marijuana dealer (Emile Hirsch), the son of a mob-connected tough guy (Bruce Willis); angry at a pothead (Ben Foster) who owes him money, the dealer and his pals kidnap the guy's 15-year-old kid brother (Anton Yelchin); every choice they make is bad; Sharon Stone as the boy's anguished mom; Justin Timberlake as one of the dealer's hangers-on. Profanity, explicit sexual language; drug use; explicit sexual situations with nudity; climactic gun murder; window-shattering fights; vicious ethnic slurs; steaming profanity. Not for under-17s.)
``Letters from Iwo Jima'' (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) (Clint Eastwood's memorable, deeply humane and nuanced companion film to ``Flags of Our Fathers'' (R, 2006), this time seeing the World War II battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 through the eyes of actual Japanese fighters, from a lowly baker (Kazunari Ninomiya) who just wants to survive, to the kindhearted general, Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), who, though friendly to America, demanded all his men fight to the death and designed the system of tunnels that forestalled Japanese defeat for many weeks. (7,000 Americans and more than 20,000 Japanese died at Iwo Jima.) Less bloody than ``Flags of Our Fathers,'' film still shows spurting, newly limbless stumps and soldiers ablaze; one intense scene (though more smokey than bloody) depicts Japanese soldiers committing suicide with hand grenades (pressure for honor suicides among Japanese troops is a key theme); prisoners are murdered by both sides in brief scenes, but acts of mercy are also shown; a horse lies mortally wounded; dialogue -- in Japanese with English subtitles -- has mild profanity; some drinking. Cinema buffs 16 and older.)
``Perfume: The Story of a Murderer'' (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) (Ludicrously overwrought, over-designed melodrama about a serial killer (based on Patrick Suskind's novel) in 18th-century France; a young man (Ben Whishaw) raised as a lowly orphan has only a powerful sense of smell; in a kind of naso-sexual awakening, he trails a pretty Paris fruit seller (Karoline Herfurth) and unintentionally kills her; her scent obsesses him; he works for a perfumer (Dustin Hoffman) to learn the trade, then moves to Provence and begins killing young women for experiments in recreating the girl's scent; Alan Rickman as a merchant with a daughter (Rachel Hurd-Wood) he means to protect. Throat slittings, hangings, shootings; explicit sexual situations; nudity; orgiastic (yet nonexplicit) mass nude scene. Not for under-17s.)
``Children of Men'' (Chilling, intensely atmospheric, ultimately redemptive thriller (based on P.D. James' novel), set in a grim Britain, circa 2027, where a militarist regime rules a strife-torn land and brutally rounds up refugees from everywhere; humans have become infertile and are doomed; Clive Owen plays a former activist who now despairs; his ex-wife (Julianne Moore), an anti-government fighter, asks him to get travel papers for a special young woman (Claire-Hope Ashitey) who offers hope for humanity; he and the girl run a gantlet of violence; an old mentor (Michael Caine) offers brief sanctuary. Shattering gun and bomb violence; bloody injuries; suicide theme; birth scene; very strong profanity; marijuana; drinking; smoking. Thoughtful film buffs 17 and older.)
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