BROTHER BEAR Oh, brother, what a bore... Brother Bear has been plugged as the last gasp of the traditional animated film, the movie that may help Disney decide whether to invest anymore in old-fashioned toons or simply concentrate on the computer-generated fare that's been putting the bread on the table these past few years (Finding Nemo, Toy Story, etc.). This marketing strategy seems a tad premature -- at the screening I attended, there was a trailer for another upcoming film drawn "old-school" style, meaning this isn't quite the end of the road -- but more to the point, I'd hate to think the future of anything depended on something as mediocre as Brother Bear. This soggy tale finds the studio raiding its own tombs for material, cobbling together pieces of The Lion King, Pocahontas and other hits to create a yawn-inducing yarn about an Eskimo warrior who's transformed into a bear. The human characters are dull, the bear cub is cloying, the comic relief (doltish moose voiced by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) is annoying, and the songs by Phil Collins -- how do I delicately put this? -- suck. The lovely Pocahontas tune "Colors of the Wind" included the line, "You think the only people who are people / Are the people who look and think like you / But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger / You'll learn things you never knew you never knew." There! It took five seconds of reading to discover the message that this movie spends 80 minutes trying to spit out. 1/2

LEVITY After serving his entire adult life in prison, a repentant killer (Billy Bob Thornton) is given an early release and decides to make amends for his past sins; his journey brings him into contact with a no-nonsense preacher (Morgan Freeman), a spoiled party girl (Kirsten Dunst) and the sister (Holly Hunter) of the boy he killed two decades earlier. This meandering movie rises and falls depending on each individual storyline: Thornton's scenes with Hunter are easily the strongest; his sequences with Dunst are interesting but rarely believable; and his moments with Freeman too often bring the film to a thudding halt. The other titles included in the Charlotte Film Society's Bonus Week are the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, the Russian wartime saga The Cuckoo and the Thai import The Legend of Suriyothal. For details, call 704-414-2355 or go online to http://charlottefilmsociety.com. 1/2

LOVE ACTUALLY Many of the most enduring movie romances make us willingly suspend our disbelief, but the colossal disappointment Love Actually asks viewers to go to such extremes to disengage from reality that we're actually open to seeing just about anything unimaginable take place in this film, even the sight of a T-rex attacking Gastonia, Darth Vader cutting loose at a disco, or Jennifer Lopez delivering an interesting performance. Writer-director Richard Curtis, the sharp screenwriter of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, has assembled a great cast for this multi-story piece in which various folks find love in London in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Unfortunately, there are absolutely no surprises in any of the increasingly choppy vignettes, and one segment (involving a lonely young Brit's belief that he could get laid in a heartbeat if he lived in the US) is so preposterous I was certain it would be revealed as a dream sequence (nope). None of the performances by the name players can be faulted -- Hugh Grant as the British prime minister, Emma Thompson as his sensible sister, Liam Neeson as a sensitive widower, Billy Bob Thornton in a cameo as the randy US president (given Tony Blair's recent role as Bush's lapdog, I expect the scene where Grant tells off Thornton will lead to standing ovations over in UK theaters). But it's little-known Bill Nighy who fares best, portraying a has-been rocker hoping his Christmas ditty will catapult him back to the top of the charts.

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BEYOND BORDERS It's been a while since we've had an all-consuming romantic epic set against an international backdrop, and while Beyond Borders doesn't come within even 100 kilometers of attaining the power of, say, Reds, it's a solid, second-tier effort. Angelina Jolie plays a pampered rich girl whose dormant humanitarian spirit gets a rude awakening once a compassionate doctor (magnetic Clive Owen) involved with relief efforts forces her to open her eyes to international atrocities. The story's globe-hopping seems almost too calculated -- our heroes journey from Ethiopia to Cambodia to Chechnya, threatening to turn this into a Berlitz Travel Guide of the World's Hot Spots -- but the movie's refusal to compromise is admirable.

IN THE CUT Meg Ryan delivers an appropriately dour turn in this psychosexual drama about a lonely New Yorker who falls for a roughneck detective (Mark Ruffalo) cryptic enough to make her suspect he might also be the serial killer who's been hacking up women. On the most commercial level of a murder-mystery, this is a complete washout, jammed with gaping plotholes and a laughably obvious culprit. As a stylized study of the uneasy symmetry between the ache of sexual longing and the risk of violent retribution, the film occasionally threatens to spring to life, yet all potential is repeatedly forced to take a backseat not only to those tired thriller elements but also to director Jane Campion's misplaced sense of artful abstraction.

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY It's hard to determine whether George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones brought out the best in each other or whether the Coen Brothers brought out the best in both of them. At any rate, they're perfectly cast in this sharp romantic comedy that ably captures the long-established rhythms of the screwball form. Clooney exhibits the right degree of screwball aptitude as a hotshot divorce lawyer who may have finally met his match in a client's wife (Zeta-Jones, who hasn't been this alluring since her breakthrough in The Mask of Zorro). When he's not playing dull heroes, Clooney comes across as the class clown trapped in the class president's body, and his zest in mocking his own leading man status works to glorious advantage here.

KILL BILL VOL. 1 Online film geeks who believe cinema was only invented in their lifetimes will consider this prime porn, but more knowledgable viewers will be let down after all the hype. Simple, straightforward and streamlined, Quentin Tarantino's latest is an action flick in which a woman warrior (Uma Thurman) seeks revenge against her former associates. There's no reason this wafer of a story should be supported by multiple movies (Vol. 2 arrives in February), not when the trimming of countless repetitious shots might possibly have resulted in one zippy, kick-ass film. Tarantino's gimmicky approach eventually becomes tiresome; if the second volume is anything like this one, they might want to consider changing its name to Overkill Bill.

LOST IN TRANSLATION In what may be the finest performance of his career, Bill Murray stars as Bob Harris, an American movie star who's come to Tokyo to appear in a whiskey commercial. Initially, he appears to be suffering from jet lag, but it soon becomes apparent that this malaise isn't temporary -- on the contrary, Bob's in a perpetual gloomy funk. He befriends a young American woman (Scarlett Johansson) staying at the swanky hotel, and they eventually form a special bond. A specialized movie for a specialized audience, director Sofia Coppola's fabulous new film is one of those unique, introverted gems that either enfolds you with its generosity of spirit or leaves you cold. And filmgoers who complain about the artificiality of most American movies are especially encouraged to check it out -- as is usually the case in the real world, this picture shows that there are no happy endings or sad endings, and, sometimes, there are no endings at all. Many people will call this film a slice of life. I call it a slice of heaven.

MYSTIC RIVER Director Clint Eastwood has fashioned a strong drama about three childhood friends brought together years later by a tragedy. Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) may have a violent past, but he fiercely loves his daughter and is shattered when she's found murdered. One of Jimmy's former pals (Kevin Bacon) is the detective assigned to the case, while the other former chum (Tim Robbins) emerges as a leading suspect. The performances are immaculate, and Brian Helgeland's script addresses several noteworthy themes, meaty enough that the obviousness of the mystery feels even more of a cheat. Still, despite its shortcomings, the acting and the atmospherics continue to haunt me; it's almost certain, then, that this will remain the year's best disappointment.

RADIO Inspired by a true story, this centers on a mentally challenged kid (Cuba Gooding Jr.) in South Carolina and the high school coach (Ed Harris) whose interest in the lad transformed both their lives. Films like this one are created solely to pummel our tear ducts, yet Radio left me unmoved. Maybe it was because Mike Tollin directed this with all the flair of an infomercial. Maybe it was because of the shameless script by Mike Rich (Finding Forrester). Maybe it was because Gooding is never allowed to play a three-dimensional character but rather a manifestation of a white man's cause, human currency to be handed around whenever a character needs his or her consciousness raised. Then again, maybe it was simply because the theater's air conditioning unit was drying up my contacts something fierce, making tears an impossible acquisition.

RUNAWAY JURY The latest adaptation of a John Grisham bestseller, this one posits that there's hope for ordinary citizens to take on the powerful gun lobby -- and possibly win. It's a fantastical concept -- more far-fetched than anything in Star Wars or The Wizard of Oz -- but that doesn't make it any less savory a dream. And the flames of that dream are stoked to an inferno in this slick drama in which a jury member (John Cusack) has his own reasons for wanting to sway the vote in a civil suit involving a major gun manufacturer. Gene Hackman, who has the distinction of appearing in both the best Grisham adaptation (The Firm) and the worst (The Chamber), is all coiled menace as the consultant who's never met a jury he can't manipulate.

SCARY MOVIE 3 Scary Movie 3 features the likes of Charlie Sheen, Pamela Anderson, Simon Cowell and a Michael Jackson clone -- certainly some folks' idea of a good time, but little more than an act of sheer desperation as far as I'm concerned. Then again, this series has always been about low-brow entertainment, but at least the original picture delivered plenty of laughs. Operating like an inferior issue of Mad magazine with all the pages mixed up, this randomly ping-pongs between tepid take-offs of The Ring, Signs, The Matrix Reloaded and 8 Mile. The notion of Leslie Nielsen playing the US President is funny in theory, but this film even blows the comic potential of that situation. 1/2

SYLVIA Failing to convey the imagination of Frida, the poignancy of Iris, or the profundity of Virginia Woolf's plight in The Hours, Sylvia brings up the rear when it comes to films about tortured women trying to create art while contending with mental and/or physical anguish. Known in shorthand as the suicidal author of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath won't see that description expanded by this dreary effort that's more interested in documenting a tragic love affair than getting inside this woman's head. Whether Plath's art and death were fueled by much beyond romance gone awry seems almost beside the point in this picture, which focuses almost exclusively on the soap opera angle and in effect paints largely unsympathetic portrayals of both Sylvia (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her husband, poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig).

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE Loosely based on the exploits of serial killer Ed Gein, both film versions (1974 and 2003) deal with five college-age kids whose ill-advised road trip through a desolate part of Texas puts them in contact with a murderous, cannibalistic clan whose most terrifying member (Leatherface) is a hulking psychopath who wears his victims' faces as masks. The bottom line? The original picture is a genuine classic of the genre, a punishing, unrelenting nightmare that never allows viewers even a moment of sanity or security. This doltish new version, on the other hand, is nothing more than business as usual, a feeble retelling that guts the integrity of the original and wears its own cynicism like a ragged mask. 1/2

WONDERLAND "John Holmes" and "Rashomon" aren't two cinematic staples that normally turn up in the same sentence, yet that film's m.o. of using varying viewpoints to relate the same event is employed in this muddy dramatization of the Wonderland killings of 1981. The involvement of a porn star in this sordid affair is doubtless what inspired director James Cox to tackle this material in the first place, yet Holmes (Val Kilmer) is such a featureless character that he comes across no more defined than any generic Tom, Big Dick or Harry. A few actors make momentary impressions -- Lisa Kudrow as Holmes' estranged wife, Kate Bosworth as his teen girlfriend -- yet most are kept in the shadows, as hard to make out as this film's ultimate intentions.