“300”
**
1/2 OK, forget the sociopolitical reasons why director Zack Snyder’s “live-action meets digital-effects” battle flick bores more than thrills even as it slays ’em at the box office. Here are other reasons why this ode to a Grecian war is less than the sum of its body parts. Yes, the visuals are impressively lavish. That’s expected of a movie based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the legendary battle of Thermopylae, in which a woefully outnumbered Spartan army resisted an overwhelming Persian force. But when it comes to acting or the sort of muscular, moving storytelling one hopes from a movie about courage and battlefield glory, “300” is more weakling than warrior. Gerard Butler’s Leonidas is vigorous, but there’s a chill to his valor. Only Lena Headey as his wife and Sparta’s queen commands the screen with the tensions expected of a classic tale.|R|117 minutes |Released today|Lisa Kennedy
“Hot Fuzz”
**
1/2 The makers of the hilarious zombie takeoff “Shaun of the Dead” bring us their version of a British cop film, but the laughs are fewer and farther between. Simon Pegg stars as London’s top cop, banished to small-town England so his success will stop embarrassing his superiors. In tiny Sandford, he finds out the bucolic town may be hiding far more sinister crimes than the happy constables would admit. Overly long and not nearly as funny as it thinks it is.|R|120 minutes |Released today|Michael Booth
“Starter for 10”
**
1/2 Brian Jackson (James
McAvoy) lost his beloved dad to an early grave and has spent an inordinate amount of his life watching “University Challenge,” a TV trivia game show that is the U.K.’s answer to “Jeopardy.” Brian casts off his working-class environs and leather-clad mates at the film’s outset and heads for the University of Bristol. It’s 1985 and Britain is in the thick of Thatcher, but politics don’t play much of a part in Brian’s life, outside of a friendship with the school’s resident revolutionary, willowy brunette Rebecca (Rebecca Epstein). Rebecca, incidentally, is the first Jew that Brian has ever met, but such exotica takes a back seat to the buxom charms of Alice (Alice Harbinson), a frothy Barbie doll with a great head of hair. The movie’s slight story, adapted by David Nicholls from his own novel, follows Brian’s pursuit of Alice and his dream of appearing as a contestant on “University Challenge.” |PG-13|92 minutes |Released today|Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Daily News
