From the outside, Jack Nicholson's insurance salesman Warren Schmidt may seem like an average schmo, but seen through his eyes, he's King Lear. One night soon after retiring, he calls a number off the television to sponsor a young Tanzanian boy; before long he's sending letters off to the other side of the world on a regular basis, pouring out his heart in a way you sense he never has. The Midwest serves director Alexander Payne's satire, playing off coastal assumptions of heartland virtue.--S.A. (Bryn Mawr; Ritz 16)

The elements in Robert Duvall's latest directorial effort don't fit together any better than the title suggests. Duvall plays a New York-based hitman who's finally starting to settle down late in life when he's sent to Argentina on a job. There, he becomes enraptured by the tango and falls in love with a beautiful dance instructor (Duvall's 30-year-old squeeze, Luciana Pedraza) while awaiting a shot at his target. An actor whose best performances always have something of the unfinished about them, Duvall shows a similarly spontaneous side as a director, but Tango lacks what an acting teacher would call a spine. --S.A.(Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

Basic starts with an intriguing premise and a tried-and-true structure: Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) leads a patrol of seven soldiers into the Panamanian jungle for a training exercise, and one hurricane later, all but two are dead, and the survivors are none-too-eager to talk about what happened. Enter Tom Hardy (a buzz-cut John Travolta), a maverick ex-military narc with some blemishes on his record who butts heads with straight-arrow lieutenant Connie Nielsen, who's given a ludicrous attraction to Travolta's character.--S.A. (Cinemagic; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Main St.)

Talented young footballer Jess (Parminder Nagra) loves David Beckham. But her parents, first generation immigrants to the London suburbs, want her to focus on a proper marriage to a nice Indian boy, much like her sister (Archie Panjabi). Gurinder Chadha's charming, energetic movie charts Jess' efforts to hide the fact that she's signed on with a girls' auxiliary team, befriended teammate Keira Knightley (a Mia Hamm fan), and developed a crush on their sensitive Irish coach (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Unlike most teen romances, this film takes the girls' perspectives and complicated feelings seriously, detailing their daily negotiations of culture differences (race, nation, gender, class, and generation). --C.F. (Bala;Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

Michael Moore has deliberately taken on a subject -- the American propensity for violence -- that can't be explained, just to see how close to the impossible he can get. Bowling begins, of course, with our fondness for guns, but Moore pushes past that answer, pointing fingers at retailers who offer cut-rate ammunition, at racial and economic disparities, and at a media that makes it seem like we're more violent than we actually are..--S.A.(Roxy)

Lonely, depressed tax lawyer Steve Martin meets witty, well-read "lawyer girl" in a chat room. How surprised he is when she arrives on his doorstep: Boisterous ex-con (and executive producer) Queen Latifah wants him to help her clear her record of the felony burglary for which she was framed. And how unsurprised you are that she teaches this uptight white man to shake his booty, open up to his two kids, lust after his ex (Jean Smart) and even outsmart Latifah's thuggish ex (Steve Harris). The broad comedy derives from standard class and race frictions: Latifah is delightful, and as the man who wisely falls in love with her on first meeting, Eugene Levy brings a welcome dryness to the otherwise predictably soppy proceedings.--C.F. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Narberth; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

Set in Depression-era, tabloid-driven Chi, Chicago splits off Kander and Ebb's cracking songs from the rest of the story, setting them in a fantasy nightclub space that is interwoven with the real-life setting. Renée Zellweger proves to be an honest-to-goodness triple threat; while hardly a belter, she finds her way into Roxie's go-getter bite, and she's as light on her feet as any good comic actress. Chicago may not rank with the classics, but it's the best traditional movie musical in many a moon. --S.A. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16; UA Grant)

First, you've got to get your head around the idea that the outer core of the Earth is spinning, and if it happens to stop -- which it totally could -- we're all in deep doodoo: our planet's magnetic field will start to disappear, and then it's nothing but massive lightning storms selectively destroying famous cities and iconic bridges. But never fear: If that happens, Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart will lead a team of actor/scientists deep below the surface of the Earth. They will speak the scientific jargon of our times ("nuke-yu-ler"). They will believe that one is a prime number, and that two isn't. They will walk around 1000 miles below the surface in magic spacesuits that protect them from being crushed by the weight of the Earth.--Ryan Godfrey (AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.)

Four lifelong friends make their annual trip to a remote Maine cabin as a snowstorm looms. Then they start running into people in the woods who have nasty space eels exploding out of their butts. So far, so good, actually; but then Jonesy (Damian Lewis) gets possessed by the head eel. Then Morgan Freeman shows up as a psychotic special-ops alienbuster named Colonel Kurtz -- the horror! And then, is that really Tom Sizemore and Donnie Wahlberg trying to save the world? --R.G. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.)

DYSFUNKTIONAL FAMILY

Eddie Griffin might be one of our greatest standup comedians. Or, he might be one of our worst. You won't find out watching Dysfunktional Family, which has the distinction of being the most incompetently directed performance film I've ever seen. Griffin's family and his threadbare upbringing are at the center of Griffin's act, so the decision to mix in documentary footage of Griffin going home for a family reunion isn't totally off-the-wall, but director George Gallo's decision to intercut the real-life characters with Griffin doing his act, often in mid-sentence, totally robs us of any chance to watch Griffin strut his stuff. --S.A.(AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview)

FRIDA

It's well known that Frida (played by Salma Hayek) suffered mightily and throughout her life, emotionally, spiritually and physically: a 1925 trolley wreck breaks her back and leaves her in a body cast for years. This pain became the primary source of her art (her many self-portraits are her most famous legacy) as well as a dreadful, inevitable focus.--C.F.(Bryn Mawr)

HEAD OF STATE

From its start -- Nate Dogg in front of Mount Rushmore flanked by dancing white girls dressed in skimpy red, white and blue -- Chris Rock's crossover dream is obvious and derivative. Picked by party regulars to lose a race for president, D.C. alderman Rock shakes things up by running a hip-hop campaign and naming his bail bondsman brother (Bernie Mac) as his running mate. He encourages poor folks to get mad ("That ain't right" becomes his slogan, set off against his opponent's "God bless America, and no place else!") and flirts with adorable Tamala Jones.--C.F. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Bryn Mawr; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.)

A MAN APART

Vin Diesel is an undercover narcotics cop in Los Angeles who arrests a Mexican kingpin and ends up with a dead wife when the new cartel takes over. He and partner Larenz Tate go after the nascent honcho, until Diesel steps over the line and has to turn in his badge. The end. Nah, just kidding. He actually takes the law into his own hands! So conventional -- but it all somehow works, because of a career-best performance from a damaged, haunted Diesel, and whattaya know, we consequently care for the character.--R.G. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

NOWHERE IN AFRICA

A family of German Jews -- idealistic father Merab Ninidze, pampered mother Juliane Köhler, and open-hearted daughter Regina (played as a child by Lea Kurka and as a teen by Karoline Eckertz) -- flee Germany in 1938, leaving behind family, friends and dad's career as a lawyer. In Kenya, he works someone else's farm with a crew of black workers whom he respects; his wife, meanwhile, resents her classed descent and makes him pay by withholding sex. Their daughter's sad but youthfully hopeful story forms the basis for a Holocaust film that doesn't show the Holocaust.--C.F. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

PHONE BOOTH

The premise of Phone Booth couldn't be simpler: A guy named Stu (Colin Farrell) answers a phone on the corner of 53rd and Eighth in New York City. As it turns out, the caller has his eye on Stu, literally, watching him through a high-powered rifle scope. To underline his threat, the sniper takes out a loud-mouthed pimp, at which point the cops and the press amass, assuming Stu is the shooter. For the rest of the movie, Stu -- accused by the killer-caller of being too selfish and cynical, too modern mannish -- is caught in that phone booth.--C.F. (AMC Orleans; Baederwood; Cinemagic; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

THE PIANIST

A Polish Jew hiding from the Nazis in Warsaw, sometimes looked after by friendly non-Jews, Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), the titular artist, refuses to acknowledge that life has already changed forever, that the Germans had invaded weeks before. The film mostly takes Szpilman's view, showing the atrocities he sees. Finally forced to evacuate, Szpilman keeps out of sight. While the "action" now decreases, the film becomes almost unbearably acute, approximating the man's psychic state, his process of internalization.--C.F. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

THE QUIET AMERICAN

In Phillip Noyce's adaptation of Graham Greene's avowedly "anti-American" novel, Fowler (Michael Caine) is a British journalist who's living the good life in 1952 Saigon until Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) walks into the picture and starts wooing his girlfriend Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). However, Greene's love-triangle allegory leaves us stuck looking through Fowler's eyes, never getting a sense of what life was like for the Vietnamese; for all the arguing Fowler and Pyle do over what's best for Phuong, we get no chance to hear her own thoughts on the subject.--S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

SPUN

The first feature from music video director Jonas Åkerlund (Madonna's "Music," Metallica's "Turn the Page") all but begs you to hate it, opening with a frenetic scene of meth addicts in action. But despite a few genuinely nasty moments -- speed freak Ross (Jason Schwartzman) cuffing his stripper girlfriend to the bed, then duct taping her eyes and mouth while he runs errands shoots to the top of that list -- Spun is stupidly likeable, as must any movie be that features John Leguizamo jumping around the house in nothing but a sock.--S.A.(Ritz at the Bourse)

TALK TO HER

Pedro Almodóvar's newest movie takes so many turns, it's unfair to reveal too much, but its basis is the relationship that develops between two men -- Benigno (Javier Cámara) and Marco (Darío Grandinetti) -- who are both attached to comatose women, the former professionally, the latter romantically. Almodóvar's real subject is the way fictions, either those created for us or the ones we create ourselves, fill gaps between people. --S.A. (Ritz Five)

VIEW FROM THE TOP

Bruno Barreto's romantic romp puts Gwyneth Paltrow, Kelly Preston and Christina Applegate in tight, short flight attendant uniforms and then pitches the plane about so they scramble and skitter. When Paltrow, ambitious for the Paris-NewYork run, falls in love with perfect, sensitive lawyer Mark Ruffalo (who also has a loving and supportive family), she believes she can't fly and commit at the same time.--C.F. (Ritz 16)

WHAT A GIRL WANTS

Warner Bros. is hoping that what a girl in the 7-14 demographic wants is an exact tonal replica of The Princess Diaries, only with Amanda Bynes. She's a headstrong but button-cute working-class American teen who decides to spend the summer with her blue-blood English father (Colin Firth), who has yet to find out he's been a dad for 17 years. To complicate matters, daddy is running for Parliament, and he's also about to get married to an evil stepmother, who comes complete with an equally evil daughter.--R.G.

(Baederwood; UA 69th St.; UA Grant; UA Riverview; Roxy)