This week at the movies we have parenting quarterbacks (The Game Plan, starring The Rock), FBI agents (The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner), lonely citizens (Feast of Love, starring Greg Kinnear and Radha Mitchell), and one angry father (In the Valley of Elah, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron).  What speaketh the critics?

After generating middling box office returns for films like Doom, Walking Tall, and The Rundown, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson takes a career readjustment into comedy.  In The Game Plan, Johnson plays a high-flying quarterback whose bachelor lifestyle is interrupted when he's suddenly confronted with a 7-year-old daughter he never knew he had from a prior relationship. While some critics are impressed with The Rock's charismatic performance, most are exasperated by the movie's excessively saccharine tone and formulaic plot that's stretched to a nearly two hour runtime. With 33 percent on the Tomatometer, critics are sending The Game Plan back to the drawing board. (Check out our Total Recall Game Plan feature here.)  

The Rock practices Vulcan mind-melding.
From documentaries like No End in Sight and Fahrenheit 9/11 to narrative pieces like The Situation and Rendition, no conflict has gotten as immediate a cinematic response as the one we're currently embroiled in.  The latest movie to join the fray: The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner about FBI operatives trying to locate terrorists in the Middle East.  While The Kingdom wants to do good by exploring the topic of international politics and subterfuge, critics claim that the drama is manipulative and the film quickly descends into war genre trappings, treating enemies as generic moving targets.  The Kingdom fails to accomplish its mission at 46 percent on the Tomatometer.  

"And here's what would happen if Saudi Arabia doesn't get enough Nintendo Wiis."
With Everything is Illuminated a few years behind us and Watchmen coming up, the idea of some novels being too complex to be adapted suddenly seems passé.  Feast of Love, based on a novel by Charles Baxter about a community of people looking for emotional connections, could also have been deemed too sprawling and multi-faceted to adapt convincingly.  So while they haven't found any weak links in the fine ensemble cast, critics call Feast of Love a hodgepodge of sentimentality that's ambitious but fails to go in-depth with its characters. And the film's congenial manner, coupled with its total lack of cynicism on love and human relationships, makes for a pleasant time at the movies, if not a riveting one. At 56 percent, Feast of Love is for those willing to gorge on romance at the multiplex.

"Would you believe I have some advice on this matter?"
Ever since being catapulted to the limelight with his much-discussed Best Picture Oscar win for the racial melodrama Crash, Paul Haggis has been a divisive figure in the film community.  And his latest directorial effort, In the Valley of Elah, doesn't look to buck the trend. Elah stars Tommy Lee Jones as a gravel transporter trying to uncover the mystery the death of his son, a Marine recently returned from Iraq. Critics say that while some of Haggis's themes and symbolic images are heavy-handed, In the Valley of Elah is an otherwise engrossing murder mystery and profound antiwar statement, featuring a mesmerizing performance from Jones. With 69 percent on the Tomatometer, Elah showcases some peak performances. (Check out our review here.)

"Okay, in this scene, you're outraged about something. Really outraged. Go with it."
Also opening in limited release: The Price of Sugar, a documentary about the Dominican Republic's corrupt sugar production, is at 86 percent; Outsourced, a comedy about an office drone teaching his replacement in India, is at 85 percent; Lust, Caution, Ang Lee's controversial erotic thriller, is at 79 percent (check out our review here); The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson's new comedy/drama about three soul-searching brothers, is at 65 percent; The Man of My Life, a French import about the sexual politics between three neighbors, is at 53 percent; Trade, a high-minded thriller about the sex trade and human trafficking, is at 20 percent.

"Ooo, a MacGuffin."

And, finally, it's game over for last week's round of Guess the Tomatometer. m_ioannidis hit it on the nose on guessing Resident Evil: Extinction's 26 percent Tomatometer.

Recent Jamie Foxx Movies:
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47% -- Miami Vice (2006)
78% -- Dreamgirls (2006)
13% -- Stealth (2005)
61% -- Jarhead (2005)
71% -- Shade (2004)

Wes Anderson Movies:
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56% -- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
79% -- The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
86% -- Rushmore (1998)
77% -- Bottle Rocket (1996)