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Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne and Ben Whishaw as Jon Keats in Bright Star. (APPARITION FILMS)

Recommended

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Polo Park, St. Vital. 14A
This low-budget horror flick causes more terror with a billowing sheet or a creaking door than all the Saw movies put together. Director Oren Peli's less-is-more "documentary" about a couple haunted by a demon might be the most genuinely scary movie in years. 4 stars (Reviewed by Jill Wilson)

Starting Friday

AMELIA
Grant Park, Polo Park. G
Hilary Swank stars as the pioneering aviatrix in this biopic co-starring Richard Gere and directed by Mira Nair.

ASTRO BOY
Grant Park, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. G
A robot with the soul of a boy is exiled from his floating city to make his own way in the garbage-strewn world in this CG update of the classic Japanese TV series, featuring the voices of Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage and Donald Sutherland.

CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE'S ASSISTANT
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, Towne. PG
A teenager unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires when he joins a touring sideshow filled with monstrous creatures. Starring John C. Reilly and Salma Hayek.

SAW VI
Garden City, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A
The moralist psycho Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) died two movies ago, but is still making his presence felt in this latest round of gory gameplay starring Costas Mandylor.

A SERIOUS MAN
Grant Park. 14A
In what may be the closest the Coen brothers ever get to autobiographical film, this comedy set in Minneapolis in the late '60s follows the torments of a physics professor who endures one personal crisis after another, including a wife seeking a divorce, a Korean exchange student proffering bribes, and a son more concerned with paying off a drug debt than preparing for his bar mitzvah.

NOW PLAYING

The following movies have been previously reviewed by Free Press movie critic Randall King, unless otherwise noted. For a complete list of theatres, see tomorrow's listings.

BRIGHT STAR
Globe. PG
Jane Campion's period romance examines the secret, intense and ultimately tragic love affair between 23-year-old English poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). It's lovely but so restrained, it makes Merchant-Ivory look like Neveldine/Taylor. 2-1/2 stars

CAIRO TIME
Grant Park. PG
When her husband is delayed doing sensitive work in Gaza, a Canadian magazine editor (Patricia Clarkson) tours Cairo and is distracted by her hubby's charming friend (Alexander Siddig), the owner of a men-only cafe. Not a tale of forbidden love so much as sublimated attraction, it is Clarkson who makes it worth watching, portraying a passion that is no less inclined to smoke just because it's on the back burner. 3 stars

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital. G
An animated feature about a wacky inventor who somehow manages to turn food into precipitation. Like the perfect gourmet meal, it's visually stunning and only gets better once you sample it. 4 stars (Reviewed by Rick Bentley)

COUPLES RETREAT
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital. PG
If you're looking for plot, narrative intricacy or layers of subtle characterization, you're barking up the wrong palm tree. This is a movie about four amiable couples, their low-level relationship woes, and the South Pacific getaway that makes everything all better. A slight but sweet coming-of-age story for middle-aged couples. 2-1/2 stars (Reviewed by Colin Covert)

THE INVENTION OF LYING
Globe, Polo Park, St. Vital. PG
In a world where telling the truth is a given, Ricky Gervais is a failed screenwriter who turns the world upside down with an ability to say things that are not true. It's a one-joke premise, but it all kicks into subversive overdrive when Gervais tells his dying mom a comforting whopper about a "man in the sky" who oversees a glorious afterlife ... The Invention of Religion, you might say. 3-1/2 stars

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A
Gerard Butler vows elaborate revenge after his wife and daughter are murdered, not only on the criminals but on the justice system that enabled the bad guys. The movie wastes two powerful actors: Butler seethes like a pontificating right-wing blogger and Jamie Foxx, as a prosecutor trying to stop the campaign of terror, is uncharacteristically dullsville. 1-1/2 stars

THE STEPFATHER
St. Vital, Towne. 14A
A seemingly normal guy (Dylan Walsh) seeks the perfect family, and starts to show his homicidal tendencies when inevitable imperfections start popping up. This is a wholly unnecessary remake of the nifty 1987 suspense movie that adeptly deconstructed the American dream. 2 stars (Reviewed by Jay Stone.)

SURROGATES
Polo Park. 14A
In a future where high-tech robot surrogates experience life as proxies for their human masters, a pair of FBI agents (Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell) investigate the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create the remote-controlled phenomenon. A subtly comic science-fiction thriller about what happens when most people have relinquished life as we know it to fake-looking avatars. 3 stars

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Garden City, Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG
Spike Jonze's adaptation of the classic kids' story embellishes Maurice Sendak's minimalist 10 sentences with a backstory to the wolf-costumed Max (Max Records). Max's troubled home life is imaginatively refracted through his fantastic adventures among a motley group of affable but dangerous monsters. It's a fine movie -- it's just not really a kids movie. 3-1/2 stars

ZOMBIELAND
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A
A quartet of survivors of a zombie plague follow their dream of a life free of cannibalistic undead. Director Ruben Fleischer boldly splices the post-apocalyptic-flesh-eating-cannibal movie with the wistful coming-of-age movie, and darned if he doesn't make it work. Too bad the middle section of the film loses integrity -- both in structure and in principle -- due to a gratuitous extended cameo that pulls the audience out of the story. 3 stars

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 22, 2009 E22