Movie Guide

New in theaters

Director: Fernando Eimbcke. With Enrique Arreola, Diego Cataño. (87 min.)

Flama and Moko are teenagers with an apartment to themselves, so naturally they order in a large pizza and indulge in a marathon afternoon of "Halo" on the Xbox. Their bliss is interrupted by a pesky 16-year-old neighbor, Rita, who wants to use the oven to bake a cake and ends up giving one of the boys kissing lessons. The pizza arrives 11 seconds late, and since the delivery service promises a free pie if they overshoot the 30-minute guarantee, the boys refuse to pay. Deliveryman Ulises thinks he's being conned and refuses to leave. The Mexican writer-director Fernando Eimbcke attempts to give this story a melancholy overlay, but its main interest is in its confirmation that teenagers are pretty much the same everywhere. (In Spanish with English subtitles.) Grade: B
- Peter Rainer

Sex/Nudity: 4 scenes of innuendo and frank talk. Violence: 4 scenes. Profanity: 26 strong expressions. Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco: 3 scenes with marijuana.

Director: Alexandre Aja. With Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan. (105 min.)

Ah, the things I endure for you, dear reader. This remake of the 1977 Wes Craven horrorfest strands a vacationing family in an abandoned nuclear testing zone. The desert may look barren, but fear not, bloodthirsty irradiated mutants soon show up to party hearty. Alexandre Aja directs in full glop mode and the cast includes a few performers, including Ted Levine (from "Monk"), Robert Joy, and Kathleen Quinlan, who probably wish they were elsewhere. Grade: C
- P.R.

Sex/Nudity: 3 scenes. Violence: 30 gory scenes. Profanity: 44 strong expressions. Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco: 1 scene with smoking.

Director: Brian Robbins. With Tim Allen, Kristin Davis. (98 min.)

Tim Allen plays a lawyer who is - as if by magic! - transformed into a sheepdog. All flea-bitten canine puns and wordplay aside, Disney's remake of its own 1959 hit is a serviceable comedy. While Allen does not have the natural charm of Fred MacMurray's paterfamilias in the original, he nonetheless plays the gag consistently enough to not seem completely ridiculous. An anti-animal-testing agenda is a bit heavy and oversimplified, but at least it is not a beast as dull as "Doogal" or as piddling as "The Pink Panther."Grade: C+
- Robert Newton

Director: Kurt Wimmer. With Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright. (85 min.)

When an experimental virus has turned many citizens into vampires, the corporate-church-government alliance that caused all the trouble develops an antivampire weapon. The vampires send warrior Violet to steal it, but when the weapon turns out to be an infected boy, her maternal instinct is to save the boy's life. It's ultraviolent, but the digital photography makes it look more like a comic book than any live-action flick in memory. Grade: D+
- M.K. Terrell

Sex/Nudity: 1 scene of partial nudity. Violence: 28 scenes. Profanity: 14 strong expressions. Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco: None.