Guangcheng and Bale. (Michael Stewart/Getty Images)

Standing in a Manhattan event space with cocktails and views of the Hudson, Chen Guangcheng was far removed from the countryside house that confined him for over a year and a half, before he captivated the world in April and May by escaping from house arrest in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, being taken in by the American Embassy in Beijing. Blind since childhood, Mr. Guangcheng climbed and felt his way past the guards posted around his home by the local authorities, who had imprisoned him for 51 months on charges largely considered to have been fabricated, before releasing him to his home. A self-taught, or “barefoot,” lawyer, he had irked the local authorities by legally challenging their unlawful land seizures, treatment of the disabled, pollution and incidents of forced abortions and sterilization to enforce the one-child policy.

The Chinese activist was surrounded by fellow lawyers on Wednesday night, though they were less likely to be from his village than from The Village, where, after some diplomatic tension between the U.S. and China, he now attends NYU Law School as a visiting scholar. Human Rights First, an organization that advocates the government for greater American leadership in fighting for global human rights, honored Mr. Chen at its annual awards dinner, held at Chelsea Piers’ Pier 60. 

After an introduction and interview between Meredith Vieira and HRF President Elisa Massimino, actor Christian Bale presented the award: “He climbed walls. He navigated fields, ditches, woods—journeyed hundreds of miles to make it to the US embassy—all while keeping his shades on. Steve McQueen in The Great Escape has nothing on this man.” Mr. Bale had attempted to visit Mr. Chen with a CNN crew last year but was roughed up and chased away by guards. Meeting him for the first time right before the event, Mr. Bale also spoke the written remarks of Mr. Chen, who wept on the Brit’s shoulder while receiving the award.

The enthusiastic American corporate/pro bono lawyers who made up a large part of the crowd celebrated their rural Chinese counterpart’s award and had already raised $2 million dollars for HRF leading up to the event. NYU Professor Jerry Cohen, an expert on Chinese law who helped bring Mr. Guangcheng to New York was also honored, and executive producer Howard Gordon accepted Human Rights First’s Sidney Lumet award for Integrity in Entertainment for his show, Homeland, which deals with national security and human rights.

However, Mr. Chen’s thoughts in his speech turned away from New York and Hollywood towards the serious situations of individuals in his own homeland. He said, “While we enjoy ourselves tonight many of our friends are missing" and spoke of his nephew, who now faces prosecution for stabbing three men who invaded his home in the aftermath of his uncle’s dramatic escape.

The Observer spoke with Mr. Chen through an interpreter before the event. His voice bubbling with the emotion that would overwhelm him on stage, he spoke of working for his homeland. “Being here is absolutely of the most practical use for China. What I’m studying now is useful for the situation in China.”

Though Mr. Chen is studying abroad as a Chinese citizen with the approval of the government, he may not be able to return to his homeland to continue his activism should the state see him as a threat. “I absolutely would love to return—and I feel like at some point I will go back. But I feel like at that point China will be a different place than it is now,” he said. He had previously been reported as hoping to return to China within several years, but the actions against his family by local authorities may have diminished that possibility.

As China seems more distant, Mr. Chen is taking English classes and adjusting to life in America, including large fundraising dinners with celebrities.

Bale in The Dark Knight Rises.

“Get with the program!” scolds another letter from a brainwashed fan of the Batman-as-seen-through-the-pretentiousness-of-the-Christopher-Nolan trilogy, “You are a dinosaur!” He’s probably right, and I probably would—if I could only make one lick of sense out of what this nonsense is all about. Silly pop-culture comic book cinema about grown men in rubber masks and Styrofoam jock straps is bad enough, but incomprehensible gibberish to boot is just plain unacceptable. Halfheartedly, I give The Dark Knight Rises—the third and final Batflick in the Nolan trilogy—one star for eardrum-busting sound effects and glaucoma-inducing computerized images in blinding Imax, but talk about stretching things. That’s all most immature audiences require for their hard-earned money these days. The rest of it should not be reviewed by anyone over the age of 12.

As caped crusaders go, I prefer Superman, Spider Man and, above all, Captain Marvel, who has been criminally ignored by the movies so far. (Can’t you just see Michael Fassbender staring into the camera hissing “Shazam!”?) And as Batman goes, I had a lot more fun when he was fighting off Catwoman and The Joker at the Saturday afternoon double features of my youth in his campy bat cave with his jailbait roommate Robin. Drat! Christopher Nolan sent Bruce Wayne to a shrink and Batman lost his mojo. I like one caption writer’s description of the Batman epics as “car porn for geeks and gearheads.” But that doesn’t make The Dark Knight Rises any better. Trash is trash, but when it costs an estimated $250 million (bat food compared to The Amazing Spider-Man’s $137 million), the charges turn criminal and someone should subject the garbage man to a citizen’s arrest.

Like all previous flicks directed by Christopher Nolan and written by his brother Jonathan, this one defies logic and reeks of repulsive, bloated self-importance (not to be confused with anything resembling narrative) and the arrogant conviction that no matter how slick, obtuse, confounding or incompetent it gets, the fanboys will slobber approval. Only a fool would tackle a synopsis, but briefly: We open eight years after Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) vanished in disgrace, recovering from wounds inflicted by The Joker (Heath Ledger) and taking the fall for the death of phony hero and secretly corrupt D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckart). Haunted by the pain and tragedy of past losses and living in seclusion under Gotham City, the 73-year-old superhero—having first risen under the tutelage of Bob Kane in 1939—is lured back into the daylight by neo-noir villains like sexy cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and a monstrous drug-fueled terrorist with a mumblecore voice named Bane (British muscle McGurk Tom Hardy), who commands an army of killers living in the sewers with a face covered by a gas mask (he speaks through a wind tunnel); old friends like police commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), corporate officer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Bruce’s longtime butler Alfred (Michael Caine); and new allies like idealistic cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the cunning, enigmatic billionaire socialite philanthropist Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), who joins the board of Bruce Wayne Enterprises to save the empire from going under and turns out to be too good to be true. The coherence ends there. Sick and bent over—his X-rays have him looking like matchsticks—Batman comes out of retirement to the musical accompaniment of Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte,” digs the Batmobile out of mothballs and hobbles off to bring the world back into balance, starting with the Stock Exchange. The rest of the movie, which runs just under three hours, is an interminable barrage of exploding football fields, flying cars, computer-generated images of crumbling skyscrapers and bridges and raging mobs fleeing the nuclear destruction of Gotham City. When all else fails, Bane threatens to destroy the human race in 23 days with one brash act, and Bruce ends up flat on his back, in more ways than one.

Christian Bale mumbles and whispers through an echo chamber, changing his appearance and his voice for reasons known only to Mr. Nolan. Michael Caine chews holes through his dialogue with a peat-bog Cockney accent so thick you can’t understand what he’s talking about anyway. You can hoke it all up with crushing violence, but that doesn’t make it pleasurable. Amid an endlessly contrived pile of red herrings, Marian Cotillard’s character seems like something they went back and invented in post-production, while Anne Hathaway, who turns out to be Batwoman in mufti, comes off as a cold, karate-chopping zombie with cleavage. There are so many plot twists I stopped counting. The Nolan brothers seem to be making it up as they go along. Not one character is developed beyond a flat, one-dimensional cardboard paper-doll construct without heart and soul, not to mention flesh and blood. Not one of these distractions invades the plot for any purpose except to extend the running time. Speaking lines they cannot possibly understand, not one actor makes any attempt to be believable. So manufactured and synthetic that they eventually lose all sense of reality, they’re like reconstituted orange juice and processed cheese. If The Dark Knight Rises is finally the funeral of Batman forever (promises, promises!), trendy technology once again triumphs over artistry, professionalism, taste and good clean fun.

Turning a mosh pit of mystical comic book gimmicks into a money pit of metaphysical mumbo jumbo, Christopher Nolan gives new meaning to both DUI and DWI—“Directing Under the Influence” and “Directing While Intoxicated”—while raking in millions. I’ll have what he’s having.

rreed@observer.com

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Running Time 164 minutes

Written by Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer (story)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman

1/4

The sound of a million geeks screaming (Warner Bros.)

Since the tickets sold out in January for the July 20th premiere of Christopher Nolan's third Batman installment, Warner Bros. probably doesn't have to hype The Dark Knight Rises any more. We mean, obviously they will spend a billion more dollars on advertising and marketing tie-ins, but for once we'd like to see a big blockbuster just completely stop all promotions one month before it hits theaters.

Although that would probably lead Copyranter or someone at Ad Age to claim this as the most ingenious viral marketing stunt ever. And then everyone would do it. And then movie trailer editors and distributors would be out of business in months. We need this hundredth The Dark Knight Rises trailer. For the good of Gotham, and all its residents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ASQqjK47c04#!

Too bad this is the most confusing trailer to the movie we've seen yet, and somehow manages not to include either of its female leads (Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate). It's just a lot of mob scenes, and Tom Hardy trying to outdo Christian Bale in a "ridiculous voice" contest.

We liked it better when they were just exploding our bridges backwards.

Hilary Swank, at a Santa Monica Cirque Du Soleil performance (Getty Images)

A selection of celebrities who have recently attended Cirque Du Soleil and been summarily featured in press on People or Us Weekly's web sites or PerezHilton.com, placed in ascending order of desperation for publicity:

• Christian Bale
• Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez
• Tim Tebow
• Pitbull
• Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Maddox Jolie-Pitt et al.
• Kylie Minogue
• "Pregnant Beyonce and hubby Jay-Z"
• Kristin Cavallari and Jay Cutler
• Perez Hilton

Cast of 'Newsies' performing on 'The View'

Since we first saw Christian Bale prancing across dusty Manhattan streets belting "Santa Fe," we've held a torch in our heart for the 1992 Disney live-action flop Newsies. We don't even care the Roger Ebert once likened the film to "warmed-over Horatio Alger," since deep down we knew that one day, we'd have the chance to audition for a stage production of the show. (In our fantasy, we weren't Christian Bale/Jack Kelly's love interest, Sarah, because she was a goody-goody. We were always Ann-Margret's brassy saloon singer, Medda Larkson.)

Now our dreams are that much closer to coming true, as the New Jersey production of Newsies at the Paper Mill Theater has just announced the full line-up for its Broadway debut on March 15th.

Even better: the role of Jack Kelly, the brash, con-artist  "Cowboy" (think Sawyer from Lost, except younger, and with a terrible American accent and a love of theatrical dancing) will be reprised by Jeremy Jordan, who had left Newsies in September to star in the ill-fated Bonnie & Clyde. B&C closed last month after a brief run due to poor ticket sales.

Mr. Jordan might also be recognizable to non-theater-going audiences as Dolly Parton's grandson in the new Glee-meets-Sister Act 2 feature film, Joyful Noise.

Jeremy Jordan in Joyful Noise:

Christian Bale as Jack Kelly in the original Newsies:

The cast of Newsies performing on The View back in December:

Bale and Ni Ni.

In the dark history of human atrocity, one savage, inhuman chapter that is always missing from the textbooks in courses about the Pacific conflict in World War II is the Rape of Nanking. Except for the occasional documentary, this harrowing event has gone largely unexplored by filmmakers, yet it surges with historic value and the elements of heartbreaking drama. Ask history majors about what the Japanese did to freedom-loving civilians to alter the world and all they know is Pearl Harbor, Bataan and the Death March. Now the great Chinese director Zhang Yimou has made a valiant and compassionate effort to enlighten the ignorant. The Flowers of War is his best film since Raise the Red Lantern. It is emotionally shattering.

In the winter of 1937, after Japan conquered and destroyed Shanghai, Emperor Hirohito’s cruelty and ruthless thirst for power shifted to Nanking, the Chinese capital. More than 200,000 people were massacred, including the Chinese army, and only a handful of ordinary people fought to survive. Their bravery and heroism have become legendary in China. This is the true story of an American mortician named John Miller, brilliantly played by Christian Bale, who miraculously made his way through the fire, mortar and bombs to reach a Catholic cathedral to prepare a murdered Catholic priest for burial. When he reaches the church, a small altar boy is the only one left to offer shelter to the homeless. Having already missed the last boat out of the harbor before the Japanese takeover, John hides out in the church himself, sharing space with 13 terrified convent girls and a group of abandoned prostitutes from the Jade Paradise, a notorious brothel in the red-light district. As the fumes of powder and perfume waft up through the rafters, the painted women and the innocent virgins all turn to him as a kind of surrogate savior. Far from being a saint, he’s a thief, an adventurer and a drunken war profiteer. But he is also inexplicably transformed by the plight of these women and children to find a conscience he thought buried long ago—especially by a beautiful courtesan named Yu Mo, who begs, “If you help us, I will thank you in ways you can never imagine. All of us will.” It’s a plea, made to a lonely man who hasn’t been with a woman for years. It is also a challenge. The movie catalogues the events, large and small, in the lives of these dissimilar people—each one a flower growing up to the light through the filth and rubble of war—that bond them together with mutual respect to overcome prejudice, escape death and value life as an extraordinary gift, not to be taken lightly.

The Flowers of War is profoundly involving on many levels. Clocking in at 141 minutes, it requires patience, but the rewards are numerous. Zhang Yimou finds human revelations in small places and small faces, as seen both through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl, forced to age prematurely while she watches the brutality of aggression and conflict from a hole in a stained-glass window, and through the gun sights of the last Chinese soldier in Nanking, who sacrifices his chance to leave for one final act to save his people. This is a director who knows how to tell a story from many points of view by slowly building myriad characters simultaneously: the opportunist who risks his own life to save the convent girls from rape by dressing in the robe of a priest and becomes an accidental hero; the two prostitutes who meet a mortifying fate at the hands of Japanese soldiers when they return to the ruins of their bordello to retrieve a jewelry box that symbolizes a once-privileged life now destroyed forever; the father who goes to work for the enemy to get his daughter out of Nanking, but ends up wrongly labeled by her as an unforgivable traitor; even the Japanese commander who ploughs through grenades, corpses and crushing debris for one chance to play the cathedral organ. Zhang Yimou knows how to build characters gradually, until you get to know his roll call as friends but without the unnecessary exposition that burdens most historic war pieces. But the center of the film is still the whores themselves, who make the ultimate sacrifice to save the convent girls from Japanese gang rape, giving the lie to the cliché that prostitutes are “cold and heartless.” After six years in a convent as a child, beatific Yu Mo (called Mo by her friends) was raped by her stepfather when she was 13. She has empathy for the girls huddled together in the church. By the time she had reached their age, she was already forced to take her first clients. Her special appeal for the American is completely understandable. She has education, she speaks perfect English with a mandarin accent, and she’s the one who devises the courageous plan to save the virgins from tragedy by enlisting the help of the other whores. The tableau of sewing the drapes into uniforms to trick the enemy soldiers with sex, binding their breasts to pretend they are teenagers, and using their professional skills to do one last thing in life that is honorable while John, posing as the priest, drives the children across the border using Communion wine as a bribe—well, the whole sequence rendered me silent with heartbreak. The film mercifully shields the viewer from too much graphic gore and brutality in the interests of finding an audience. But the imagination is unmistakably fueled. Instead of shock value, the director concentrates on individual acts of heroism, masterfully conveyed and emotionally wrenching.

Zhang Yimou (pronounced “Johnny-moo”) used to be a cinematographer, so his films are always sumptuous. From the colorful costumes of the courtesans performing a Chinese folk song to the ashes of the city in ruin, every image is evocative. The music is magical and gorgeous. Without exception, the richness of the cross-cultural performances really resonates. It’s rare for a bankable star like Christian Bale to collaborate with a foreign director and appear in a film of this magnitude, but having once appeared as an English boy trapped in Japan’s invasion of China in Steven Spielberg’s great 1987 film Empire of the Sun, he has remained intrigued by the period. With an unheard-of budget for a Chinese film of $100 million, his diligent work and the punishment of the no-frills location shooting in China pay off handsomely. He is just one element in a haunting panorama of a war that illuminated the bleakest corners of despair with unexpected acts of decency and valor, but he fits in majestically with the rest of the massive ensemble. In the role of Yu Mo, Zhang Yimou has discovered a new Gong Li in the luminous, radiant actress Ni Ni. At 23, she is on her way to what I predict will be a big career. The Flowers of War is not perfect. The film is too long, with so many characters it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart. But it’s a special film of sacrifice, redemption and hope in the shadow of a holocaust that packs an emotional wallop from which there is no escape. I can’t get it out of my thoughts, and I recommend it highly.

rreed@observer.com

THE FLOWERS OF WAR

Running Time 141 minutes

Written by Heng Liu (screenplay) and Geling Yan (novel)

Directed by Zhang Yimou

Starring Christian Bale, Ni Ni and Xinyi Zhang

3/4

Newsies–a (financial) bomb of a film the dealt with the sobering topic of 1922 youth-led Newsboy Strike by getting Christian Bale and Bill Pullman to prance around with half the cast of Nickelodeon's Roundhouse–can now be enjoyed two decades later in live theater form thanks to Disney not learning its lesson the first time.

According to lead actor Jeremy Jordan:

"Disney has invested a lot of money in this, and a lot of work has gone into this,” he said. "I think the audience is in for a lot of intense music, intense dancing and an exciting story. It’s an incredibly inspiring story, incredibly dramatic, but also fun and energetic."

Of course, Disney put a lot of money into Newsies twenty years ago with a budget of $15 million, and only made 1/5th of their investment back. Maybe the ace up Disney's sleeve for the New Jersey production is Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book for the show! Naturally. Why not Harvey Fierstein? That would just be weird. He won't be in it though. Boo!

The fact that Disney is trying to take away some of the "bad idea" thunder from Julie Taymor in no way dampens our enthusiasm for the show, though. As long as we're allowed to sing along quietly in our seats during such classics as "King of New York" and "Carrying the Banner," we wouldn't miss this for the world.

In this dysfunctional Lowell, Mass., family full of children with different last names, Mark Wahlberg is Micky, whose hardscrabble life is filled with missed opportunities as he tries to please his trashy, peroxided, chain-smoking motormouth mother, Alice, who acts as his manager (another scenery-chewing, scene-stealing performance by Melissa Leo in high-heel white boots and big hair the size of a hornet nest); and his borderline-retarded crackhead half-brother, Dickie (Christian Bale), who acts as his trainer. There is also a girlfriend named Charlene (Amy Adams)--a tough, sexy, no-nonsense bartender who battles his relatives to stand by her man and save him from his family of demented lowlifes.

The story begins in 1993, when Micky is already over the hill and Dickie is still clinging to his one moment of glory in the ring--the night he scored a knockdown in a losing fight against Sugar Ray Leonard. Micky is loyal to Dickie, but every time he has a bout, they have to drag the trainer out of a crack den. Dickie is so deluded he thinks HBO is following him around making a movie about his own "comeback," but they're really only filming a cautionary documentary about what drug addiction can do to American youth. Factored into the equation are at least five or six sisters (in one scene, I'm sure I counted seven!) who come and go like comic caricatures, resembling a Carol Burnett skit about the Macbeth witches entering show business. (A real David O. Russell example of uncontrolled excess that is fortunately missing from the rest of the film.) With Charlene guiding and supporting him and Dickie behind bars, Micky finally dumps his mother, reshapes his career and starts to focus. After a win at Caesar's Palace, when sports commentators were writing his obit, Micky finally gets a chance for a title bout in London. What happens after Dickie gets out of prison with new teeth and new plans provides fireworks.

The genealogy is baffling. It is never clear why they're all called Eklund except Micky, who is a Ward, even though some of the siblings who are younger than he are called Eklund, too. That bimbo mother apparently really got around. With serrated voices, ratty hair and a passion for beer and processed junk food, they're a perfect illustration of the stuff blue-collar white folks in the Boston suburbs crave--but not the upscale kind. These walking nightmares have never seen a Billy Wilder movie, tasted sushi, listened to National Public Radio or had a flu shot. They are easily satirized and obvious fodder for actors with tattoos.

And still, the cast is never less than hypnotic. Mark Wahlberg is both dopey and endearing as the Muscle McGurk with a good heart trying to run away from a crazy, sadistic family of control freaks and a dead-end future. Christian Bale returns to the way he looked as the emaciated, sleep-deprived zombie he played in The Mechanic, like the ghoulish, skeletal Dachau survivors when the Allies liberated the death camps in 1945. Once again, he gives his all for his art in a memorable but repellent performance that reminded me of the painful, grimaced faces in the paintings of George Grosz. All of the actors' voices disappear into boiled-cabbage Boston accents that are astoundingly accurate (especially Amy Adams, eras removed from the nice cookbook author-housewife in Julie and Julia). These are characters so repulsive that it's hard to care what happens to them, but it's to the credit of a superb cast that you do end up caring. At the end, The Fighter shows a clip of the real Micky and Dickie, and all bets are off. As close to a circus sideshow as it sometimes seems, this art not only imitates life, but mirrors it creepily.

rreed@observer.com

THE FIGHTER
Running time 115 minutes
Written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson
Directed by David O. Russell
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, Amy Adams

3/4

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Michael Mann's Public Enemies is suffocated by historical accuracies, coming as it does from such a notoriously detail-oriented director. Not so! Mr. Mann’s script, co-written by Southland’s Ann Biderman and Ronan Bennett, is chock-a-block with dramatic license. For example: F.B.I. agent Melvin Purvis (a decidedly underused Christian Bale) did not account for the killing of every major bank robber in the 1930s, as the movie seems to purport. Not that we mind entirely—Public Enemies isn’t a History Channel special on John Dillinger after all—we just found it … interesting. Maybe the stories about Mr. Mann being obsessed with minutia are more of a legend than first thought. Either way, it’s not the only myth about Public Enemies being bandied about in the media. Here are some more! (Naturally, spoilers!)

Myth #1: Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard have great chemistry.

This is to take nothing away from either of their performances—though, for the record, Ms. Cotillard is infinitely better than Mr. Depp, who ratchets his intensity just above drowsy—but all that stuff you’ve read about flying sparks and smoldering glances in Public Enemies is hogwash. Mr. Depp’s John Dillinger and Ms. Cotillard’s Billie Frechette couldn’t seem to care less about each other. Here’s a handy rule: When a movie constantly has to tell the audience how much one character loves another, over and over again, via the supporting players, there is something seriously wrong. Maybe with a better script this relationship would have been believable, but, as it stands, Sam and Mikaela in Transformers have a more developed pairing. This is not a good thing.

Myth #2: Digital photography makes a huge difference.

We don’t pretend to be experts in digital filmmaking, but what’s the big deal about its use in Public Enemies? For starters, Mr. Mann has done this before, and done this better in both Miami Vice and Collateral. Second, the digital technology produced a weird final image—everything was more muted, yet crisper at the same time. Meh. We’ve seen reviews say the gymnastics allow viewers to peer into Johnny Depp’s soul. All we saw was the glue affixing his fake mustache to his upper lip.

Myth #3: If you don't like Public Enemies, you're an idiot.

A popular meme about Public Enemies is that it won’t have long-term success at the box office because regular moviegoers won’t embrace what is essentially an “art film.” (Noted Internet hysteric Jeffrey Wells dedicated an entire blogpost to this stipulation last week.) Apparently you need to be a Rhodes Scholar to even "like" Public Enemies—never mind that the middle of the film features a 20-minute gun fight that was both louder and more violent than anything in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (seriously, too loud!); or that Ms. Cotillard gets  beaten and smashed in the head by brutal cops . Regular moviegoers aren’t intelligent enough to understand depth like that! If Public Enemies stumbles at the box office in the next couple of weeks, it’ll be because you commoners just don’t get real filmmaking! Yeah, right. Wake us when the elitism is over.

What, is there a better way to celebrate our nation’s independence over this July 4th weekend than by spending some time inside a movie theater? Three films hope to win your hard-earned money, but, if none of them get your juices flowing, you can always see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen again. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

Public Enemies

What’s the story: The last time Michael Mann directed a summer blockbuster, the result was the hit-and-miss Miami Vice, a movie that still plays best with the sound on mute. Here’s hoping Public Enemies fares a bit better. Johnny Depp (a.k.a. The Second Biggest Movie Star on Earth—when did that happen?) plays John Dillinger, who, when he isn’t making goo-goo eyes at his girlfriend (summer breakout candidate Marion Cotillard), tries to stay one step ahead of the F.B.I. agent tasked with bringing him to justice (Christian Bale, still growling). As is usually the case when dealing with a Michael Mann film, the reviews have been split fairly evenly between praise and scorn. But, there is good news: Our own Rex Reed, he of notoriously high standards, flat-out loved Public Enemies, calling it “one glamorous, glorious, gun-blazing whale of an entertainment.” Sign us up.

Who should see it: Colin Farrell.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

What’s the story: The beloved-but-under-the-radar super-franchise returns for a third movie with a formula sure to make every kid (and every kid-at-heart) beam with anticipation: Familiar characters (The Wooly Mammoth! That hilarious squirrel!) + Dinosaurs (x) 3-D glasses = Sold-Out Showings. With a $14 million opening on Wednesday, expect this to make megabank over the holiday.

Who should see it: The guys and gals at Pixar. (It’s always good to check in on the competition.)

I Hate Valentine’s Day

What’s the story: It’s not shaping up to be a good summer for Nia Vardalos. First, there was My Life in Ruins, which is currently rocking a 12 percent Fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes; and now, here comes the poorly scheduled I Hate Valentine’s Day. (Nothing says July 4th like a movie that takes place in February!) Ms. Vardalos wrote, directed and stars in this romantic comedy as—wait for it—a woman who hates relationships but has her theory on love questioned when she falls for a dreamy restaurateur, played by John Corbett. If you fell asleep reading that plot synopsis, you are not alone.

Who should see it: People who thought The Proposal was too cutting edge.