Opening, Week of Friday, Sept. 10

‘442: Live With Honor, Die With Dignity’
Japanese-born director Junichi Suzuki’s documentary that looks at the men, then and now, who made up the decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team. (NR, 97 mins.)

‘Breathless’
The 50th anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark French New Wave film that made international stars of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in the story of a two-bit gangster who hides out with an American girl in Paris. (NR, 90 mins.)

‘Flipped’
Director Rob Reiner’s latest movie is a coming-of-age romantic comedy about two eighth-graders who start to have feelings for each other despite being total opposites. Review on Page 27. (PG, 90 mins.)

‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’
Milla Jovovich returns as Alice, as she continues her fight to survive in a world ravaged by a virus that turns its victims into the Undead. (R, 95 mins.)

‘Winter’s Bone’
An unflinching Ozark Mountain teenager wends her way through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact. Review on Page 26. (R, 100 mins.)

The Top 10 Movies

The top grossing movies of the past week, courtesy Hollywood.com

‘The American’
George Clooney stars as a hitman who retreats to the Italian countryside, where he befriends a local priest and strikes up an unexpected romance while awaiting the details of his next assignment. Director Anton Corbijn has crafted a quiet, haunting European thriller, drained of emotion and moving at its own deliberate and graceful pace. (R, 105 mins.)

‘Machete’
A loud, giddy, carnal blast from Robert Rodriguez as he expands his "Grindhouse" trailer into a full-bore exploitation flick starring Danny Trejo as a renegade Mexican federale and tough-as-nails vigilante for justice who is out to settle the score. It’s a pastiche of Westerns, revenge thrillers, cultural stereotypes and softcore porn. (R, 105 mins.)

‘Takers’
A notorious group of bank robbers find its plans for one last score thwarted by a hardened detective hell-bent on solving the case. It’s a slickly efficient yarn, largely uncomplicated yet offering a few moments of insight and dramatic weight. (PG-13, 107 mins.)

‘The Last Exorcism’
A fraudulent exorcist finds his faith truly tested when an encounter with a possessed teenager in rural Louisiana brings him face to face with the devil. It’s one of the scariest movies to come along in a long time, until the last five minutes or so, when it completely falls apart. (PG-13, 90 mins.)

‘Going the Distance’
Drew Barrymore plays a journalism grad student who meets a music exec (Justin Long) while interning in New York City one summer, and the movie follows their struggle to keep the fire burning once she returns home to California. This movie tries hard to blend Judd Apatow’s bromance humor with the romantic comedy’s sappy conventionalism, resulting in a goulash that just doesn’t taste right. (R, 97 mins.)

‘The Expendables’
Sylvester Stallone’s all-star mercenary movie is a deliriously retro ride into Reagan-era blockbusters. The macho men still deliver, but it’s not much of an ensemble piece. And despite the high body count, the whole thing feels forgettably disposable. (R, 103 mins.)

‘The Other Guys’
Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay join comedic forces with Mark Wahlberg to tell the story of a pair of sidelined police detectives who finally get their chance to crack a big-time financial fraud case. This is a surprisingly fresh take on the usually rehashed mismatched-buddy cop setup – self-aware but not tongue-in-cheek – and helped in part by action sequences played totally straight. (PG-13, 107 mins.)

‘Eat Pray Love’
Julia Roberts stars in the adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir about a woman’s yearlong globe-trotting search for sustenance and serenity after a wrenching divorce. Roberts is radiant as ever, and the movie satisfies its core audience by providing a gorgeous escape, exquisitely photographed and full of female wish fulfillment. (PG-13, 133 mins.)

‘Inception’
Leonardo DiCaprio stars in Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller as the leader of a group of skilled thieves who steal people’s ideas for corporate gain by inserting themselves into strangers’ subconscious while they are sleeping. It’s a stunningly gorgeous, technically flawless symphony of images and ideas. In its sheer enormity, it’s every inch a blockbuster, but in the good sense of the word. (PG-13, 147 mins.)

‘Nanny McPhee Returns’
Emma Thompson returns as the magical nanny who this time appears at the door of a harried young mother who is trying to run the family farm while her husband is away at war, all while trying to keep the peace between her children and two spoiled city cousins who refuse to leave. There’s a warm, British naturalism and old-fashioned cheerfulness here uncommon to most of today’s kids’ movies. (PG, 100 mins.)

Arthouse

Doris Duke Theatre

Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania St., entry on Kinau (532-8768); $8.50 general; $7.50 seniors, students and military; and $5 museum members (tickets also available online at www.tix.com):

Friends of Film Friday: ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’
7:30 p.m. today ($15 general, $12 museum members, and $20 students with ID)
A supposed documentary about an eccentric filmmaker’s attempt to locate and befriend the notorious British graffiti artist Banksy. (87 mins.)

‘The Oxbow Waterman Experience’
1, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday
A return engagement for the film that first screened during the Surf Film Festival back in July. It documents five experienced surfers tackling some of the largest waves during the winter of 2009. (45 mins.)

‘Automorphosis’
1, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Thursday
A tour of eccentrics, visionaries and just plain folk who have transformed their cars into artwork. (76 mins.)

Movie Museum

3566 Harding Ave. (735-8771) ; $5 general and $4 members; reservations recommended:

‘Red Riding Trilogy’
12:15, 2, 3:45, 5:30, 7:15 and 9 p.m. today and Sunday
A neo-noir epic that follows several characters in intertwining story lines united by the horror wrought by the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who terrorized northwest England in the 1970s and ’80s. (2009, 295 mins.)

‘Harry Brown’
12:30, 2:30, 4:30, 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. tomorrow
Michael Caine stars as a modest law-abiding citizen who becomes a vigilante when his best friend is murdered by a gang of thugs who live in his depressed housing estate. (2009, 103 mins.)

‘Swing’
12:30, 2:30, 4:30, 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. Monday
In this coming-of-age story, a boy discovers the beauty of Gypsy music and the emotions of his first romance. (2002, 90 mins.)

‘All About Our House’
12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Thursday
A modernist young home designer and a traditionalist craftsman clash over the building of a new home in this Japanese comedy. (2001, 116 mins.)