“Happy Feet”
*** It’s the lockstep of the penguins versus the soft-shoe of an outcast in “Happy Feet,” the hard-to-resist animated musical about Mumble, an emperor penguin who can’t carry the mating song but can tap dance like the amazing Savion Glover. Elijiah Wood provides the voice of adolescent Mumble. Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman play his flustered folks. Director and co-writer George Miller – the man who brought us “Mad Max” but also Babe “the talking pig” – uses this tale of Mumble’s difference and his gift to craft a sweet, if incomplete, lesson about conformity, individuality and community. Robin William outdoes himself giving voice to both Ramon, one of the slang-tossing Adelie Amigos and the “preach it penguin, preach it” Lovelace.|PG | 96 minutes|Released today |Lisa Kennedy
“The Pursuit of Happyness”
*** Will Smith mines jagged moments as Chris Gardner, a devoted father whose plunge into homelessness coincides with the opportunity he’s dreamt of: a nonpaying internship at Dean Witter. Many will cheer Gardner storming the corporate ramparts. But it’s the other places Gardner and his 5-year-old son, Chris (Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s son Jaden Christopher Syre Smith), take us – the shelters, the church services, the public spaces made private for economic circumstance – that make this journey so heart-provoking. |PG-13| 117 minutes|Released today|Lisa Kennedy
“Children of Men”
*** When African refugee Kee tells her protector that her pregnancy was a virgin one, Theo (Clive Owen) stops in his tracks. In 2027, it’s enough that Kee is the first pregnant woman in a world gone infertile more than 18 years earlier. This too? Kee may be joking. But “Children of Men” director Alfonso Cuarón is definitely winking. After all, the gifted filmmaker’s stunningly crafted tale of sacrifice, mayhem and miracles suggests there is more than one way to tell a nativity story. Like many a dystopian film (“Fahrenheit 451” comes to mind), “Children of Men” is permeated with sorrow and anger. It’s thoughtful but willfully anti-sentimental. |R| 114 minutes|Released today|Lisa Kennedy
“Candy”
** The dreary Australian film “Candy” about a young man, Dan (Heath Ledger), his girlfriend, Candy (Abbie Cornish), and heroin. Dan gets Candy started on it, but it is she who wants to push the boundaries. The fact that we feel so outside of her experience is consistent with the movie’s underlying problem. The compelling movies about addiction illuminate the varied needs or vulnerabilities that fuel the addiction, to the point that even the most naive person in the audience might finally get it. But “Candy” feels more like a superficial portrait of a willful brat and the hopeless loser she loves.|R| 108 minutes|Released today|Mary F. Pols, Contra Costa Times
