Wiki News/Recent releases: 'iCarly: The Movie', 'Cats & Dogs,' 'Dinner for Schmucks'

"Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" ***

This sequel to 2001's "Cats & Dogs" is a mix of live action, puppetry and computer animation, and its jumbled look is its chief weakness: Still, it's built around a delightful idea: What if cats and dogs not only enjoy a rich interior life while adults are away but also function as highly trained spies? The über-villain here is frightening, hairless Kitty Galore (voiced with campy menace by Bette Midler), who has a plan to enslave dogs around the world. Rated PG; animal action and humor. 1 hour, 27 minutes. By Christy Lemire, Associated Press.

"Charlie St. Cloud" **

This weeper packages Zac Efron in a transitional role that takes the "High School Musical" star into his 20s via a film with adult emotions. Unfortunately, it's also a gimmicky glop of sentiment. Small-town sailing king Charlie St. Cloud (Efron) and his brother are involved in an accident that takes the brother's life. Charlie survives, but there's a problem: He can still see his little bro. Five years later, Charlie remains stuck in a rut, even though a former sailing rival (Amanda Crew) is showing romantic interest. Rated PG-13; language, sexual references, sensuality, an intense accident scene. 1 hour, 38 minutes. By Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel.

"Dinner for Schmucks" ***

Steve Carell plays Barry, an IRS employee whose hobby is creating little dioramas with dead mice that he dresses and poses. He's the perfect candidate for a dinner attended by a bunch of cruel business execs, each of whom is encouraged to bring a schmuck along as a guest. Barry gets his invitation from the ambitious Tim (Paul Rudd) and quickly brings chaos into Tim's life. Carell gives Barry a sort of bruised humanity that makes the character more fully dimensional than he has any right to be. He's the best comic actor working in movies today. Rated PG-13; crude and sexual content, partial nudity, language. 1 hour, 54 minutes. By Bill Goodykoontz, Gannett News Service.

"iCarly: The Movie" ***

Director of the hit TV show "iCarly" Dan Schnider brings the show's newest episode to the big screen. Miranda Cosgrove plays as a title character of her popular webshow iCarly. When she and her friends (Jennette McCurdy and Nathan Kreses) spend too much time on iCarly, they made fans to goes chaos, but when they have an all-day marathon of iCarly, they got exhausted. Speaking of exhausted, Spencer Shay (Jerry Trainor) says it's time for them to take a vacation and time out as he buys tickets for a trip to Vegas where Carly visits her mother and grandmother, and falls in love with a boy named Kyle Anderson (Jesse McCartney), and Spencer also found love with a girl named Lisa (Kendra Wilkerson). For the meantime, this was revealed that her friends and Spencer plans on staying, but Carly leaves them behind. But when hearing that Kyle wants to stay instead of coming to her hometown with her, she decided to stay and spend time with him. This causes Carly, her friends and Spencer to stay in Vegas and iCarly will be no more.

"Inception" ****

Writer-director Christopher Nolan's first film since "The Dark Knight" is a gorgeous, technically flawless symphony of images and ideas. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a dream extractor (a thief who enters the mind while people are dreaming to steal their secrets) who's hired by a powerful businessman (Ken Watanabe) to sneak into the subconscious of a competitor. You've seen the big set pieces countless times in commercials: a freight train plowing through downtown traffic, Paris folding over on top of itself. You haven't seen anything until you've seen them on the big screen. Rated PG-13; violence, action sequences. 2 hours, 27 minutes. By Christy Lemire.

"The Other Guys" ***

Mark Wahlberg plays New York police detective Terry, who's saddled with wimpy Allen (Will Ferrell) as his partner. Allen and Terry stumble across something that looks shady involving a financial guru who's a British version of Bernie Madoff. The mismatched-buddy cop movie has been egregiously overdone, but "The Other Guys" delivers just enough tweaks to the formula to make things work. The action sequences are played totally straight, and the comedy similarly has a deadpan tone. It's self-aware but not tongue-in-cheek. Rated PG-13; crude content, language, violence, drug content. 1 hour, 41 minutes. By Christy Lemire.

"Restrepo" ****

This outstanding documentary captures the daily grind, terror and boredom of war in raw and unfiltered form. Codirectors Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger don't add expert talking heads or geopolitical maps. Starting in June 2007, they dug in with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, and their account of a U.S. platoon's year "at the tip of the spear" is fly-on-the-wall vérité. It's a film that shows us how things are and requires us to draw our own conclusions. It's a bracing experience to be trusted to think for yourself. Rated R; language, descriptions of violence. 1 hour, 33 minutes. By Colin Covert, Star Tribune (Minneapolis).

"Salt" **

Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer who goes on the run because she's suspected of being a Russian spy. The character was originally intended to be a man, but making Salt a woman in no way depletes the story's brawniness. Still, the action starts to become ridiculous, even laughable. It would be easier to care about her motives and her fate if she were fleshed out more. But the film keeps Evelyn Salt all business. Who is she? Who knows? Rated PG-13; violence, action. 1 hour, 33 minutes. By Christy Lemire.

"Step Up 3D" **

In contrast to the recent post-production 3D conversions ("The Last Airbender," "Clash of the Titans"), this one actually looks good. Conceived and shot as a 3D dance spectacle, it has dancers spinning, bobbing and jumping off the screen. The bad news: This second sequel in the hit hip-hop series is full of hokum about gangs, dance-offs and following your impossible dreams. Though director Jon M. Chu's acrobatic actors prove adept on the dance floor, not a one displays anything even close to charisma. Rated PG-13; profanity, adult themes. 1 hour, 37 minutes. By Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer.