“Smart People”
Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) teaches Victorian literature at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Or rather he goes through the motions. Lawrence is a burnout case, a bearded, potbellied grouch who is alternately bored or irritated by his students, and he never got over the death of his wife years earlier. An accident sends him to the ER, where his doc is Sarah Jessica Parker, who was one of his students who had a crush on him. His daughter (Ellen Page) is a tart-tongued high school senior who embraces academic excellence and political conservatism but hasn’t experienced much of life. New to the household is Lawrence’s adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), an affable slacker looking for a place to crash after the collapse of his latest get- rich-quick scheme. R. 1 hour, 35 minutes. Robert W. Butler, McClatchy Newspapers
“The Killing of John Lennon”
With the assassin’s own diary to work with, writer-director Andrew Piddington didn’t feel a need to embellish the story of Mark David Chapman in his riveting “The Killing of John Lennon.” Chapman’s archived thoughts, repeated verbatim in the voice-over narration by the actor playing him, give the movie a properly creepy forward momentum as we follow the killer on his 1980 mission to end the life of a man whose music he claimed to love. Not rated. 1 hour, 54 minutes. Jack Mathews, New York Daily News
“CJ7”
Stephen Chow plays Ti, an impoverished single dad with a son named Dicky (in one of many gender-bending twists in the movie, the boy is played by a girl). Dicky finds what appears to be a stuffed toy, but it turns out to be a mischievous alien trickster. As Dicky uses his new pal to get back at the bullies at school and to improve his grades. PG-13. 1 hour, 28 minutes. Chris Hewitt, St. Paul Pioneer Press
