CAST: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Bob Newhart, Zooey Deschanel, Ed Asner, Mary Steenburgen
SYNOPSIS: Ferrell is a human raised by Santa's elves at the North Pole until he is reunited with his biological father.
WHAT WE SAID: Times film critic Steve Persall gave Elf a B. He wrote that it is a "comedy that embraces the holiday spirit rather than spoofs its commercialism. It has some decent laughs, big ones at times, yet Ferrell and director Jon Favreau are just setting up viewers for a lump-in-the-throat finale that modern Christmas movies either forget or remake with insincerity."
SYNOPSIS: Diesel reprises his Pitch Black role as a morally ambiguous head basher, this time battling a deadly space religion.
WHAT WE SAID: Times reviewer Philip Booth gave the movie a C-plus, writing "Did anybody really need another overblown space opera, the kind that goes on and on and on, as forgettable characters battle over ancient wrongs, impossibly large spaceships blow up stuff, the fate of the world rests on one brave, tough warrior, and special-effects expenditures account for the largest portion of the budget?"
MPAA RATING: PG-13; violence
RUNNING TIME: 123 min.
The Saddest Music in the World
DIRECTOR: Guy Maddin
CAST: Mark McKinney, Isabella Rossellini, Maria de Medeiros, Ross McMillan, David Fox, Claude Dorge
SYNOPSIS: A legless beer mogul (Rossellini) creates a contest of maudlin melodies during the Great Depression.
WHAT WE SAID: Persall wrote that the film "resembles a silent movie, slightly pixilated, lighted with exaggeration and transparently false in its backgrounds. Everything seems filmed through gauze on celluloid that is faded and blurred by time. It's a fascinating look for a distinctly uninteresting story." He gave it a C-plus.
MPAA RATING: R; sexuality and violent images
RUNNING TIME: 99 min.
Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
DIRECTOR: Hatsuki Tsuji
CAST: Voices of Dan Green, Eric Stuart, Scottie Ray, Wayne Grayson, Frank Frankson, Tara Jayne
SYNOPSIS: The popular animated Japanese television series gets the big-screen treatment.
WHAT WE SAID: Billy Norris, who reviews movies for the Times Xpress page, gave the movie a B for kids and a D for everyone else because it is "basically just an elaborate instructional video on how to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading-card game."
MPAA RATING: PG for scary combat and monster images
