THE MISSING (R) Ron Howard's new film takes place in the Old West, and it consciously recalls classic Westerns like The Searchers, big movies about obsessive quests, family, redemption, and the land. At the same time, The Missing isn't a Western at all; it's a horror story. Cate Blanchett is in typically fine form as a frontier doctor in crisis when an evil Apache witch doctor kills her lover and kidnaps her teenaged daughter. With no one else to turn to, she enlists the help of her estranged father (Tommy Lee Jones) — a conflicted and tragically flawed white man who's spent most of his life living with Indians — and together they ride off in search of the stolen child. Howard has some good, nasty fun weaving elements of supernatural horror throughout the film, and the unforgiving, anything-goes terrain of America's 19th-century frontier provides a surprisingly effective setting for it all. At the same time, The Missing remains a Western, first and foremost, with everything from James Horner's musical score to Salvatore Totino's exquisite cinematography evoking the form in fine style. Also stars Evan Rachel Wood. 
1/2
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (R) Young, happily married-with-children Ann (Sarah Polley) is diagnosed with terminal cancer, given two months to live, and immediately starts checking off items on her "Things To Do Before I Die" list. Oddly enough, the plucky, doomed girl doesn't bother telling the kids or hubby; she does, however, indulge herself in a number of other activities, including sleeping with another man (Mark Ruffalo from You Can Count on Me). Director Isabel Coixet avoids most of the Lifetime Movie disease-of-the-week cliches you might expect with material like this, but some of the dialogue exchanges aren't entirely convincing, and a number of borderline surreal interludes (including a dance number in a supermarket) seem awkward and gratuitous. Polley is fine, though, and the movie gets extra points for featuring various versions of Brian Wilson's God Only Knows. Also stars Scott Speedman. Opens Dec. 5 at Tampa Theatre. Call theater to confirm.
MYSTIC RIVER (R) Clint Eastwood's latest directorial offering dives into somewhat unfamiliar waters, with mostly successful results. Mystic River is an epic tragedy about how two devastating events, a quarter-century apart, change a handful of lives in a Boston working class neighborhood. Eastwood's film is uncharacteristically filled with charged symbols and nakedly emotional Big Speeches, but the top-notch ensemble cast is good enough to pull it off and leave us wanting more. Tim Robbins is particularly effective as the damaged man-child who never quite recovered from being molested as a child, and Sean Penn burns up the screen as a man with a dead daughter and one too many secrets. Also stars Kevin Bacon, Laura Linney, Laurence Fishburne and Marcia Gay Harden. 1/2
RADIO (PG) Apparently pitched very much in the same territory as The Rookie, this feel-good tale combines sports, soap opera and nostalgia for the kinder, gentler ways of small-town America, circa anytime but now. The same guy who wrote The Rookie supplied the story, in fact, which is based on the actual life of a mentally challenged man whose eternal optimism inspires the local high school football team. Stars Cuba Gooding, Ed Harris and Debra Winger. (Not Reviewed)
RUNAWAY JURY (PG-13) If Runaway Jury is remembered at all, it will be as the movie where longtime screen icons Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman finally appeared on screen together for the first time. Other than that, the film is competent and reasonably entertaining fare, but a far cry from remarkable. Hackman is the movie's heavy, an all-seeing but utterly amoral analyst (polite code for jury tamperer), for hire to the highest bidder — which in the case of the high-profile trial he's currently trying to sway, happens to be the gun industry. Hackman's counterpart is Dustin Hoffman, who plays a highly principled and incorruptible (no laughing now) lawyer trying to make the gun industry pay for years of getting away with murder. Hoffman must really believe in the movie's anti-gun message or must have received a truly staggering paycheck for his performance here (possibly both), because it's hard to fathom otherwise why he took on such a bland, underwritten role. The story — a series of trial-related double and triple crosses — is engaging enough and sometimes even modestly exciting, but almost never particularly memorable. Another classic empty-calorie thriller based on a John Grisham book. Also stars John Cusack and Rachel Weisz.
