Raya Green (Rutina Wesley) has to go back home because her Caribbean immigrant parents can no longer afford the tuition at her tony private school. They spent that money on drug rehab for Raya’s sister. But they were unable to save her; she died of an overdose. Raya comes back to her old neighborhood to face parents who are devastated and fearful and old friends who are resentful and suspicious. They feel that Raya thinks she is too good for them. Her first reaction is to try to play down her intelligence. When called to the board to solve a quadratic equation, she pretends it is very hard for her. But she does not fool her teacher, who assigns her to tutor the student who has been most hostile to her, Michelle (Tre Armstrong). When the two of them face off against each other, they don’t trade insults or punches — they show off their best dance moves.

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“U2 in 3D” doesn’t just give you the feeling of being at a rock concert. It gives you the feeling of being a rock star. Super-big, super-close, super-clear, and super-charged, it broke the record for the most 3-D cameras used for a single movie and combines footage from seven different performances, giving it a seamless fluidity of camera movement that always feels vital and immediate. No time is wasted backstage, no interviews with fans or roadies. We are onstage from the first song to the encore, inside the performance, and inside the music.
Bono is more often seen as a statesman than a rock star these days, so it is a welcome surprise to see what a mesmerizing performer he is. He and bandmates Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen, Jr. and the Edge are in top form and the concert is everything rock and roll should be — musically, visually, spiritually. This is what they mean when they talk about rocking your world.

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Heath Ledger’s death is a terrible loss. He was an actor of great sensitivity and commitment. Most of the appreciations and obituaries focus on his Oscar-nominated performance in Brokeback Mountaintribute that emphasizes Ledger’s willingness to take risks in character roles. In the best of his performances, he played young men who were struggling with their feelings and struggling even more with their inability to express them. His brief appearance in Monster’s Ball was the foundation of everything that followed. Not many people saw his superb performance in the Australian film Candy, as a drug addict.

Today, though, I want to think of him in his lighter films. He made the silly but irresistible rock-jousting movie A Knight’s Tale a delight. He was proud that the director used his suggestion of David Bowie’s “Golden Years” song for the dance number. And he was a spirited modern-day Petruccio in 10 Things I Hate About You, strutting the tiers of the school’s football stadium as he sang “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You.” Cat (Julie Stiles) realized she could not resist him at that moment and audiences felt the same way.

There is undeniable little girl appeal in this story of a big, selfish meanie of a quarterback who is tamed by the 8-year-old daughter he never knew he had. Some audiences will find it as sugary as a fruit-scented princess pony sticker book, but its intended viewers will be delighted to see a story with a little girl who is smarter and more responsible than many of the adults around her and is adored by every one of them, especially her big, tough daddy.

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Crazy times require crazy tactics. And so just because the UN can’t seem to find Bosnia’s most notorious war criminal does not mean that a gonzo journalist shouldn’t track him down for an interview.
Based on a 2002 Esquire Magazine story called What I Did on My Summer Vacation by Scott Anderson, the movie starts off with a snarky advisory: “Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true.” The snark deepens to anger and outrage but performances of great sensitivity and heart keep it from getting shrill.
Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) is a television war correspondent equally strung out from the madness of war and from the lack of interest in the stories he sends back home. He has spent his entire career living on adrenaline and alcohol, chasing stories all over the world about people trying to wipe each other out. One night during a live broadcast on network television he had a meltdown, and since then he has been relegated to scrambling for freelance piecework for any global television service he can get to pay him enough to cover his bar tab. But the market for his stories is getting smaller and the bar tab is getting larger.
The network anchorman arrives (James Brolin, sleek and satisfied as a Siamese cat), accompanied by his cameraman (Terrence Howard as Duck), formerly Simon’s closest colleague, and Benjamin (“The Squid and the Whale’s” Jesse Eisenberg), a young kid just out of school whose father is a network executive.

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