MOVIE REVIEWS | In local theaters

“30 DAYS OF NIGHT” (C): Vampires should have thought of this before: If you can’t come out during the day, go where it’s always night, namely, Barrow, Alaska, during winter’s prolonged darkness. While director David Slade’s adaptation of the graphic novel is a huge cut above most of the gore fests passing themselves off as scary movies today, the premise and its repetitive gimmicks gradually grow as monotonous as, well, 30 days of night. 113 minutes. Rated R for strong horror violence and language.

“ACROSS THE UNIVERSE” (B-): Inspired entirely by Beatles songs, Julie Taymor’s film is visually imaginative and often quite bold. The actors, who do all their own singing, are certainly up to the challenge, including Evan Rachel Wood and especially charismatic newcomer Jim Sturgess. And while many of the arrangements are inventive, other performances are far too literal, and the conceit wears out its welcome after about an hour. By then it’s painfully clear that there is no strong driving narrative here, only a series of ’60s-era clichés, tied together by tunes. 134 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some drug content, nudity, sexuality and violence.

“AMERICAN GANGSTER” (B-): So perhaps Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated mobster epic doesn’t have a single original idea in its head, with its unshakable shades of “Scarface” and “Serpico” and “Superfly.” But it’s exceptionally crafted and superbly acted, with the on-screen combo of Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Washington, as real-life heroin kingpin Frank Lucas, and Crowe, as detective Richie Roberts, are on a collision course with one another that’s bursting with the gritty period atmosphere of 1970s Harlem. 157 mins. Rated R for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality.

“AUGUST RUSH” (D): We need to break out a whole new definition of cheesiness for a film like this. It begins with a boy (Freddie Highmore) standing in an open field where the surrounding sounds — the wind, the trees, the grass — swirl like a symphony in his head. In a whispering voice-over, he says: “I believe in music the way that some people believe in fairy tales.” It thus proceeds in fairy-tale fashion, though it’s more unrealistic than surrealistic. Without any tangible evidence, our protagonist senses his parents (Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Keri Russell) are still alive and that he just needs to make music loud enough so they can hear him (sort of like the ethos behind a Coldplay album). 112 minutes. Rated PG for some thematic elements, mild violence and language.

“BEE MOVIE” (A): Jerry Seinfeld stars in, co-wrote and co-produced this colorful jaunt about a bee named Barry who dares to leave the tradition and rigidity of New Hive City for the vast unknown of the outside world — specifically, the corner of 67th and Columbus on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. There he meets and falls for a florist named Vanessa (voiced by Renee Zellweger), who helps him sue the entire human race for stealing the bees’ honey and selling it. 90 mins. Rated PG for mild suggestive humor.

“BEOWULF” (A): The title alone will inspire painful memories of high-school English class and pangs of dread. Never fear. This 3-D animated “Beowulf” is more like “300,” only with more violence, if that’s possible. Director Robert Zemeckis, using the same performance-capture technology he introduced with 2004’s “The Polar Express,” takes on the epic Old English poem by sexing it up. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity.

“DAN IN REAL LIFE” (C+): Steve Carell plays a widower with three daughters who falls for a woman (Juliette Binoche) he meets while running an errand during a reunion with his parents and siblings. But she turns out to be the new girlfriend of his brother (Dane Cook). With a heavy dose of sitcom artifice and gooey melodrama, the movie becomes toilsome. 98 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some innuendo.

“ENCHANTED” (B): After years of watching the monstrously successful “Shrek” franchise parody everything beloved about those classic animated Disney movies, Disney is showing a sense of humor and making fun of itself. Wide-eyed, would-be princess Giselle (the irresistible Amy Adams) is banished by the wicked Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) from her idyllic cartoon playland to the harsh reality of Times Square before she can marry her one true love, Prince Edward (James Marsden). Little girls and tweens will love this movie and adults will laugh heartily and often at the way director Kevin Lima and writer Bill Kelly tweak familiar fairy-tale details. 107 minutes. Rated PG for some scary images and mild innuendo.

“FRED CLAUS” (C-): Vince Vaughn plays the same guy he always plays — the smart-alecky, fast-talking, seemingly insincere dude who ultimately turns out to be a lovable lug beneath the bravado — only this time he does it surrounded by elves and toys with jaunty Christmas music blaring in the background. Vaughn stars as the bitter Fred Claus, who’s spent a lifetime seething in the shadow of his loving, generous younger brother, Nicholas (Paul Giamatti), better known as Santa. 116 minutes. Rated PG for mild language and some rude humor.

“THE GAME PLAN” (C): Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars as an egomaniacal football quarterback whose run toward a championship hits complications when he becomes caretaker to the 8-year-old daughter (Madison Pettis) he never knew he had. Director Andy Fickman and screenwriters Nichole Millard and Kathryn Price deliver a prolonged series of klutzy, inept dad gags and scenarios, all leading to the inevitable warm fuzzies you knew were coming before you walked into the theater. 110 minutes. Rated PG for some mild thematic elements.

“HITMAN” (D+): Cheap, nasty sensationalism inspired by a video game. Timothy Olyphant (“Live Free or Die Hard”) plays Agent 47, a castoff child raised to be an unstoppable assassin by a shadowy agency called ... The Agency. Sent to Russia for a political murder, 47 is betrayed and hunted by Interpol, the Russian secret police and squads of baldies from The Agency. 97 minutes. Rated R for violence, nudity, sex.

“LIONS FOR LAMBS” (C): This preachy film seems to ask every question imaginable about the war on terrorism while offering not a hint of answers. Directed by Robert Redford, whose co-stars include Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep, the movie works here and there and is quite moving in a few places. At other times, it’s a dry discourse on who, why and how we’re fighting. 90 minutes. Rated R for some war violence and language.

“THE MIST” (C): A welcome return to the kind of subtle, slowly building scares we don’t see anymore in this overly graphic age of torture porn. In bringing to the screen Stephen King’s 1980 short story about a deadly mist that engulfs an insular Maine town, director Frank Darabont makes masterful use of silence and stripped-down, documentary style camerawork. 127 minutes. R for violence, terror and gore, and language.

“MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM” (C): You’d have to be a really little kid — we’re talking young enough to be enthralled by colorful, shiny objects and oblivious to the necessity of character development — to fall for this toy story. With wild hair and an annoying accent, Dustin Hoffman looks completely uncomfortable as the titular impresario, a childlike eccentric who doesn’t just sell toys but whose store is a living being with feelings. 94 minutes. Rated G.

“NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN” (A): This film marries the strengths of novelist Cormac McCarthy and filmmakers the Coen brothers in ways that are deceptively simple and profoundly moving, set against the harshly beautiful, seemingly endless landscape of West Texas. Set in 1980, the tale follows three vastly different men tied together by a big-money drug deal gone bad. Josh Brolin is perfectly cast as the stoic Vietnam vet who stumbles upon the bloody aftermath, finds a briefcase stuffed with $2 million and impulsively makes off with it. Javier Bardem is chilling as the mysterious, murderous psychopath chasing after him to get the cash back. And Tommy Lee Jones is right in his element as the sheriff tracking them both and lamenting the loss of his honorable way of life in an increasingly senseless world. 122 minutes. Rated R for strong graphic violence and some language.

“THIS CHRISTMAS” (C): When the Whitfield family convenes in Los Angeles for its first holiday reunion in four years, its members seem to bring more secrets with them than gifts. Writer-director Preston A. Whitmore II serves up an overstuffed but satisfying Yuletide comedy-drama with a cast that includes Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba, Loretta Devine, Regina King, Sharon Leal, Laz Alonzo, Mekhi Phifer and Chris Brown. 117 minutes. Rated PG-13 for vulgarities, sexual material, violence.

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