Avatar
*** ( 3 STARS)
$34.9
million
$551.7 million
6 weeks
Rated : PG-13
Running time : 2:40
What it's about : A paraplegic ex-Marine (Sam Worthington, above) controls the body of an "avatar," a body of a creature on another planet, and gets caught up in a struggle between the humans and the natives.
Our take : James Cameron has delivered the most-anticipated blend of live-action and motion-capture animation to date, but the story's simplistic.
Legion
* ( 1 STAR)
$17.5
million
$17.5 million
1 week
Rated : R
Running time : 1:40
What it's about : A group of strangers stranded in a desert diner and a lone angel (Paul Bettany, above)) are humanity's last defense against the wrath of God.
Our take : "Legion" may traffic in signposts of the apocalypse, but the whole affair mostly indicates that we're in the movie wasteland that is January.
The Book of Eli
*** ( 3 STARS)
$15.7
million
$60.7 million
2 weeks
Rated : R
Running time : 1:58
What it's about : In a post-apocalyptic future, a lone warrior (Denzel Washington, above) must protect a book that holds the secrets to saving mankind.
Our take : A good, righteously wrathful genre picture. We've been down similar roads before, but the cast is excellent, and the Hughes brothers work the apocalyptic turf in medium-budget style.
Tooth Fairy
* ( 1 STAR)
$14
million
$14 million
1 week
Rated : PG
Running time : 1:41
What it's about : A bad deed on the part of a tough minor-league hockey player (Dwayne Johnson, above) results in an unusual sentence: He must serve one week as a real-life tooth fairy.
Our take : A meager family offering that should be rinsed and spat out.
The Lovely Bones
** ( 2 STARS)
$8.4
million
$31.2 million
7 weeks
Rated : PG-13
Running time : 2:15
What it's about : A murdered girl (Saoirse Ronan, above) watches over her family and her killer from an in-between realm.
Our take : With the observational prose of Alice Sebold's original book gone, all that's left is a series of heavenly landscapes resembling a Claritin commercial.
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