Film clips

LITTLE ROCK — At area theaters 67 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, R President Lincoln owes his passion to crush vampires and their slave-owning helpers to the murder of his mother by a supernatural creature. (105 minutes)

87 THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, PG-13 Andrew Garfield plays the title teenager-turned-web-slinging superhero in “a different side of the Peter Parker story,” involving a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his late father, the quest to understand his parents’ disappearance and the lab of his father’s former partner and his Lizard alter ego. (136 minutes)

89 THE AVENGERS, PG-13 The title superheroes of all those preceding Marvel-based, big-screen comic book adventures, including Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America: The First Avenger (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth), in a major-movie mash-up. Nick Fury, director of the international peacekeeping agency SHIELD, pulls together a team to battle the unexpected enemy threatening global safety and security. (142 minutes)

90 BERNIE, PG-13 A black comedy from director Richard Linklater, based on the true-crime story of east Texas mortician Bernie Tiede (Jack Black). (104 minutes)

86 THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, PG-13 A group of British retirees is lured to move to India by exotic advertising. (120 minutes)

84 BRAVE, PG A courageous young Scottish princess (voice of Kelly Macdonald) inadvertently unleashes chaos in the kingdom while battling tradition, destiny and the fiercest of beasts and finding the meaning of true bravery. Animated. (100 minutes)

83 CHIMPANZEE, G In the long tradition of Disney nature documentaries, directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield take us deep into the African forests and introduce an adorable baby chimp named Oscar and his entertaining approach to life. (78 minutes)

88 DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, PG-13 Four female undergraduates at an East Coast university seek to make life better for the entire student body. (99 minutes)

74 DARK SHADOWS, PG-13 Director Tim Burton brings to the big screen TV’s campy bloodsucker Barnabas Collins (via favorite actor/collaborator Johnny Depp), turned by a witch’s curse into a vampire in the late 18th century and discovering, after being freed from a tomb in 1972, that the world has become a very different place. (113 minutes)

78 THE DICTATOR, R Sacha Baron Cohen plays the title role, a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy will never come to the country he has so lovingly oppressed. With Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley, Megan Fox, John C. Reilly, J.B. Smoove; directed by Larry Charles. (83 minutes)

70 ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT, PG Squirrely Scrat’s nutty, timeworn pursuit of the accursed acorn triggers a continental cataclysm, in the midst of which Manny, Diego and Sid encounter a ragtag menagerie of characters determined to stop them from returning home. Animated. With voices of Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Seann William Scott, Wanda Sykes, Jennifer Lopez, Joy Behar, Nicki Minaj; directed by Steve Martino, Michael Thurmeier. (94 minutes)

89 MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE’S MOST WANTED, PG Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Gloria the Hippo and Melman the Giraffe, still fighting to get home to their beloved Big Apple, find the perfect cover for a transit of Europe: a traveling circus. Animated. (93 minutes)

79 MADEA’S WITNESS PROTECTION, PG-13 The gentle chief financial officer of a Wall Street investment bank (Eugene Levy) with growing family problems escapes into the witness protection program - hiding out, natch, with Madea (writer-director Tyler Perry) - when it turns out his firm has been operating a mob-backed Ponzi scheme and that he has been set up as the fall guy. (114 minutes)

89 MAGIC MIKE, R In a movie based on his own life story, Channing Tatum plays a veteran male stripper who mentors an upstart young dancer (Alex Pettyfer) and schools him in the fine arts of partying, picking up women and making easy money. (110 minutes)

88 MOONRISE KINGDOM, PG-13 Two 12-year-olds living on a New England island in the summer of 1965 fall in love and run away together as a violent storm bearing down on the island complicates the effort of her parents and his scout troop to find them. (94 minutes)

88 THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS, PG From the folks who brought you Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less than successful, terror of the High Seas (voice of Hugh Grant) leads a ragtag crew on a probably fruitless quest to beat out bitter rivals Black Bellamy (voice of Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (voice of Salma Hayek) for the much coveted Pirate of the Year Award. Animated. (88 minutes)

88 PROMETHEUS, R A team of scientists and explorers find their physical and mental limits put to the test when they’re stranded on a distant world, where they will uncover life’s ultimate mystery. (124 minutes)

89 ROCK OF AGES, PG-13 Screen version of the stage musical about a small-town girl (Julianne Hough) and a big-city boy (Diego Boneta) who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams amid the headbanging rock of the late ’80s. (125 minutes)

77 SAVAGES, R Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch play Laguna Beach entrepreneurs, the former a peaceful and charitable Buddhist, the latter a former Navy SEAL and ex-mercenary, running a lucrative, homegrown industry involving some of the best marijuana ever developed, which runs them afoul of the Mexican Baja Cartel and a dirty DEA agent. (127 minutes)

78 SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, PG-13 Definitely not a kiddie version of the classic Snow White story. Kristen Stewart is not the only one in the land fairer than the evil queen (Charlize Theron), but she has been training in the art of war with the huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) dispatched to kill her. (127 minutes)

80 TED, R Director Seth MacFarlane also provides the voice fora young child’s beloved teddy bear brought to life by a wish, but a boyhood dream turns into a nightmare once the kid grows up to become Mark Wahlberg. (106 minutes)

87 THINK LIKE A MAN, PG-13 Four guys, whose love lives are shaken up after the women they are pursuing buy comedian Steve Harvey’s best-selling book of that title and start taking his advice to heart, conspire to turn the tables by using the book’s insider information. (122 minutes)

67 A THOUSAND WORDS, PG-13 Eddie Murphy plays a fast-talking literary agent hoisted with his own petard when his target, a New Age guru, fixes it so he must find some other way of communicating besides speech to save his life. (91 minutes)

81 TO ROME WITH LOVE, R Director Woody Allen joins Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penelope Cruz, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page in the Eternal City in a series of romances, adventures and predicaments. (102 minutes)

70 WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING, PG-13 Five couples’ intertwined lives are turned upside down by the challenges of impending parenthood, including the question of what to do when your first child precedes your first date. (110 minutes)

85 YOUR SISTER’S SISTER, R Mark Duplass plays a guy, still reeling from his brother’s death a year earlier, who finds himself between two women - his close friend and his brother’s ex (Emily Blunt) and her sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) - at the remote vacation home where he’s trying to put himself back together. (90 minutes)

Movie-rating point system

Movies are rated on a scale from 50 to 100.

Guidelines for moviegoers:

96-100 Transcendent

90-95 Exceptional

80-89 Better than most to remarkable

70-79 Average

60-69 Awful to mediocre

50-59 Irredeemable

MovieStyle, Pages 35 on 07/20/2012

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