For show schedule information, visit:

Great Escape Theatre, Moline

Nova 6 Cinemas, Moline

Putnam Museum & IMAX Theatre, Davenport

Showcase Cinemas 53, Davenport

* * *

Alice in Wonderland (PG, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - In Tim Burton's take on Lewis Carroll, Helena Bonham Carter gives an utterly fantastic, high-comic portrayal of the Queen of Hearts. The performance's only downside, in truth, is that it keeps reminding you that the movie isn't providing more diversions just like it.

Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (PG, Nova 6 Cinemas) - With its silly puns, dopey slapstick, wild comic mugging, oddly adult references, shameless sentiment, and incessant pop-tunes-on-helium, no one would make a case for this follow-up as art. But if pressed to choose between Alvin's agreeable antics and the "higher quality" of, say, Invictus, I sure know which way I'd lean.

Avatar (PG-13, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - James Cameron's floating-jungle world of Pandora, populated by vicious, toothy beasties and a race of peaceful, elongated, turquoise-blue natives called the Na'vi, is a marvel of imagination, and boasts a scale and scope that few movies attempt, let alone pull off. The film is comething to see. I just wish it wasn't so painful to listen to. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Australia: Land Beyond Time (not rated, Putnam Museum & IMAX Theatre) - David Flatman's educational documentary, which focuses almost exclusively on the stunning, evocative beauty of the Australian landscape, was the winner of the Putnam's "QC's Choice" citation during last year's Everyone's a Critic series, and for understandable reason: It's glorious.

The Blind Side (PG-13, Great Escape Theatre, Nova 6 Cinemas) - A predictable, feel-good weepie that actually kinda works. On almost any level you could name, director John Lee Hancock's movie is incredibly easy to tear apart, but even at its most saccharine and phony, the film exudes a spirited, family-friendly charm that's surprisingly infectious, and Sandra Bullock - against all expectation - is better here than she's been in ages. Nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Brooklyn's Finest (R, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - A story doesn't have to be original to be well told, and Antoine Fuqua's grim morality tale -- which plays a bit like a novelistic spin on the director's Training Day -- is actually wonderfully well told, an impassioned and gripping cop thriller devoid of even one dull sequence.

Cop Out (R, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - Kevin Smith's direction of this action comedy - the first feature that the New Jersey auteur has directed but didn't write - is clunky as hell. Then again, Scorsese himself probably couldn't make anything out of a screenplay this asinine - a senseless, unfunny, and staggeringly inept compendium of buddy-flick touchstones that gets more and more awful the longer it drags on.

The Crazies (R, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - Director Breck Eisner's fright-flick rhythms are all too predictable, and while the viscera are kept to a relative minimum, there are too few memorable images on display. Still, this Iowa-set horror trifle provides a few satisfying jolts and well-edited scenes, and Timothy Olyphant makes for a terrifically engaging and empathetic lead.

Crazy Heart (R, Showcase Cinemas 53) - Writer/director Scott Cooper's character drama features rhythms so gentle and lulling that I momentarily dozed off halfway through the film. But I'm pretty sure that I was smiling as I slept, because the steady, deliberate pacing feels just right for the tale, and because star Jeff Bridges is so masterfully assured as a down-and-out country singer that he leaves you in a state of utter, unadulterated happiness and calm. Nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Actor.

Dear John (PG-13, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - If you're not a dyed-in-the-wool Nicholas Sparks fanatic, this latest adaptation - featuring shameless, tear-jerking subplots involving 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, battlefield injuries, infidelity, cancer, autism, a stroke, and the stinginess of health-insurance companies. - should be all but unendurable. So help me God, though, the movie works.

From Paris with Love (R, Nova 6 Cinemas) - Considering that it's a manically comedic action thriller from the director of Taken, I guess it could've been a whole lot worse. Still, leads John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers don't exactly make for an endearing odd couple; Travolta rants, Rhys-Meyers stares blankly, and you can practically hear the spirits of hundreds of previous buddy flicks screaming, "Taxi!"

Green Zone (R, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - Despite this action thriller's technical acumen and Matt Damon's expectedly magnetic stoicism, you can't shake the feeling that this Iraq War fiction inspired by truth is a little too ... well ... fictional, twisting events of unimaginable complexity into a conveniently simplistic, one-man-bucking-the-system narrative.

Our Family Wedding (PG-13, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - For reasons not worth explaining, one scene in this deathly obvious, staggeringly unfunny comedy finds a goat running amok in Forest Whitaker's bathroom, downing the man's supply of Viagra, and proceeding to hump his leg to high heaven. Then the goat speaks. I think that's all you really need to know.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (PG, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - A mostly slack, bland affair. Despite the manic plotting and Christophe Beck's score blasting away at you, Chris Columbus Harry Potter-esque adventure is replete with obvious staging, graceless dialogue, and young performers desperately lacking in big-screen charisma, with Percy portrayer Logan Lerman actually a triple-threat - petulant, charmless, and dull.

The Princess & the Frog (G, Nova 6 Cinemas) - Disney's return-to-hand-drawn-form is every bit as charming and vibrant and captivating as you could've hoped for, and quite a bit funnier than anyone could've expected.

Remember Me (PG-13, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - If you can handle director Allen Coulter's and screenwriter Will Fetters' inevitable, and grossly exploitative, destination, you might find this contrived yet heartfelt love story between damaged souls a solid, emotionally resonant tearjerker that nicks at your insides in unexpected ways.

She's Out of My League (R, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53) - A wispy little throwaway of a movie in which the laughs match the groans in pretty much equal measure. Still, there are worse ways to piss away your time than with an ensemble that includes Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve, Nate Torrence, Mike Vogel, Kyle Bornheimer, and that fabulous That '70s Show mom Debra Jo Rupp.

Sherlock Holmes (PG-13, Nova 6 Cinemas) - The only thing mysterious about the plot to director Guy Richie's headache-inducing hit is whether any audience member can possibly make heads or tails of it, and the emptily busy staging and insistently jaunty score ensure that you're continually confused and annoyed.

Shutter Island (R, Great Escape Theatre, Showcase Cinemas 53)- Martin Scorsese's operatically paranoid adaptation of Dennis Lehane's 2003 suspense thriller is easily the best release of 2010 thus far, so it seems a bit churlish to wish that was higher praise. Still, it's a really good not-bad movie.

Valentine's Day (PG-13, Showcase Cinemas 53) - Obviously inspired by the romantic-comedy touchstone Love Actually - with "obviously inspired by" a kind way of saying "a blatant rip-off of" - Garry marshall's movie features 21 above-the-title stars dovetailing through roughly a dozen subplots. Not one, however, is a storyline I had any interest in returning to.

When in Rome (PG-13, Nova 6 Cinemas) - Kristen Bell stars as a Guggenheim Museum curator who drunkenly wades into an Italian street fountain, retrieves a handful of tossed coins, and eventually discovers that their original owners have, as a result, magically fallen in love with her. I'll leave it to you to decide which is more ridiculous: that we're expected to take this supernatural development seriously, or that chirpy Kristen Bell could ever land a job as a curator for the Guggenheim.

Wild Ocean 3-D (not rated, Putnam Museum & IMAX Theatre) - The underwater ballets and sequences of dolphins cavorting seem to last twice as long as necessary, and the movie's final five minutes are a greatest-hits montage of everything we saw in the opening 35; for all of its beauty, this nature doc is a little dawdling. But damn is it beautiful.

The Wolfman (R, Showcase Cinemas 53) - Despite the severed heads and gnawed-off limbs and Anthony Hopkins hamming it up to high heaven, director Joe Johnston's remake of the 1941 chiller is just about the last thing you'd expect it to be: boring as sin.