The Total Recall films ask the audiences to suspend a lot of their disbelief. After all, the films are built on the concept that in the future you will be able to chemically alter the human brain to install new memories and personalities. That’s a lot of disbelief to suspend.

This remake figures that since you are suspending disbelief, why not ask you to suspend more. It asks you to believe that the  world’s surviving population (there has been a nasty World War. Lots of chemical warfare) now lives only in Europe (or maybe just England. Possibly only London. The movie can’t seem to decide) and Australia. It asks you to believe that the typical work day commute between the two (through the center of the Earth, no less) would only take just a little bit over 15 minutes (whenever I travel the 20 miles into New York City, it takes 40 minutes, and that doesn’t even involve going through the Earth’s core. Then again, more stops.). And it asks you to believe that 56-year-old Bryan Cranston, he who can convincingly play a cancer-stricken meth dealer, can beat the snot out of 36-year-old Colin Farrell, he who has abs that you could realistically open beer bottles with.

However, if you are able to overlook these incredible and unrealistic plot points, and a few others, you might find a pretty good movie.

Farrell plays Douglas Quaid, an assembly-line worker at a robotics plant who, like most of the rest of the working class in the world, lives in Australia (The Colony) and commutes to London (United Federation of Britain), the last two inhabitable societies left after years of devastating chemical warfare. He is in a dead-end job with crappy pay, albeit with an incredibly hot wife (Kate Beckinsale), who dreams of something more. What he usually dreams of, actually, is a life as a revolutionary, fighting for The Colony’s freedom beside Melina (Jessica Biel), a fellow revolutionary with benefits.

One trip to Rekall, a shady company that offers memory implants, to seek a release from his hum drum reality turns that particular dream into a reality for Quaid. He becomes a real revolutionary, going on the run from his “wife,” who was only a government employee assigned to keep an eye on him yet now wants to kill him. He reunites with Melina, who wants to keep him safe from harm. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy conspiracy involving the UFB’s Chancellor Vilos Cohaagen (Cranston) that could endanger millions of lives.

As you can tell, the remake veers off in a different direction than the original. No, no travels to Mars in this one, although, in one of many “Easter Egg” style nods to the first film, Quaid does mention the idea to a co-worker. But while the story is different than the 1990 version, a lot of the plot points and story beats remain. This does lend an air of predictability, but usually there are subtle changes to make this film seem fresh. And Len Wiseman directs the action in such a way  that the film moves along at a brisk pace.

The biggest star of the film is the production design. They have created a stacked world with tier after tier of structures on top of one another. Apartments are created out of whatever space is available. And instead of a three-lane highway, we get a three-level highway. This is a somewhat believable future (outside, of course, of the tunnel through the Earth). The technology is a blend of what we have now and what might logically come along in the next few decades. Furniture and buildings feature design elements that mix the new with the classic, much like the world we see outside our windows today mixes the past with the present. For the most part, this creates an believable experience.

Overall, the acting is great. Farrell plays Quaid as a man outside of his element, trying to react as best he can to his constantly updating status quo. Biel does well as the earnest love interest/revolutionary. But the best performance comes from Kate Beckinsale. Beckinsale’s character in this film essentially is a blend of Sharon Stone’s and Michael Ironside’s from the first film. She play’s Lori with the determination of a bulldog and the personality of a alligator with a toothache. Watch her in the scene when Harry confronts Quaid in Quaid’s apartment building. It’s hard to figure out if her character is presenting genuine wifely concern of if she badly faking wifely concern. And, for this movie, that is the right note to play that character at that time.

If there’s a weak link in the actors, it’s Bryan Cranston. Granted, he isn’t given much of a character to work with. For most of the movie, he appears sporadically, and then only to snarl orders at Lori via a video screen or give a false-earnest address to his subjects on TV. But when does become a bigger part of the story, he plays Cohaagen with a hammy, mustache-twirling villainy to overcompensate. His performance is out of sync with the uber-serious tone the film is trying to create. and takes you out of the narrative.

That is, of course, of the plot holes don’t take out before Cranston arrives. In addition to what’s listed above, there are issues where the inhabitable zones begin and end (a map at the beginning of the film seems to show that the UFB is able to live in all of England and most of mainland Europe, yet a non-inhabitable zone is only a subway ride away), why Lori defies orders to keep Quaid alive and tries to kill him (Does she consider him too big of a threat? Professional jealousy? He leave the toilet seat up too many times?), and why a majority of the people in London and Australia speak with American accents when it has been established that the tunnel through the Earth had to be constructed because that is the only way people are able to travel.

So, your enjoyment of this film will depend on what kind of moviegoer you are. If you are the kind of person who analyzes the film they just saw, you’ll probably hate it. If you are the type who can overlook plot gaps if the action is good, then you might like it. If you fall somewhere in between, well, you’ll probably be frustrated.

1. Underworld Awakening (Sony/Screen Gems, 3,078 Theaters, 88 Minutes, Rated R): I don’t know if it’s a good sign or a bad sign that Kate Beckinsale is back in this franchise. Well, it’s good in the sense that I always like her in the role, bad in the sense that it’s a bit of a step back for her, isn’t it?

Anyhoo, Beckinsale returns as Selene, the vampire warrior, who is awaken to find that both the Vampires and the Lycans (werewolves) are threat with annihilation by humans. As Selene fights for both races’ survival, she comes across a half-vampire/half-lycan child who just might be her daughter.

The film looks like just what you’d expect from the franchise: Beckinsale in skin-tight leather, kicking ass. It won’t be Shakepeare, but if your taste run toward the goth action film, it should be entertaining.

2. Red Tails (Fox, 2,512 Theaters, 120 Minutes, Rated PG-13): The ads might say this film is “from George Lucas,” but he didn’t write or direct it. His only credit is as executive producer. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t contribute.

Lucas started developing the project, based on the real-life Tuskegee Airmen, back in the late 1980s. It was intended to open in the early 1990s, but fears amongst the Hollywood studios about financing a big budget film with a predominantly black cast made the road the the screen an arduous one, even for a producer of Lucas’ stature.

But the film is finally hitting screens. Lucas hired an African-American director (Anthony Hemmingway) and African-American writers (John Ridley, who wrote one of my most favorite comics of the last decade in The American Way, and Aaron McGruder of The Boondocks fame). I don’t see why all audiences wouldn’t be interested in heroes fight evil, no matter what color the heroes are. I hope audiences prove that to be true this weekend.

3. Haywire (Relativity, 2,439 Theaters, 93 Minutes, Rated R): It’s not easy for any athlete to make the jump to film stardom. For every Dwayne Johnson or Jim Brown, there are twice as many Kurt Thomases and Brian Bosworths.  Gina Carrano faces an even more difficlt challenge, being a female MMA fighter trying to break into the world of action films, a world not all that receptive to women with loads of acting experience.

But few athletes could ask for a better introduction to the world of movies than Carrano got. She is paired with an A-list, Oscar winning director in Steven Soderbergh, who surrounded her with a great cast that features Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, and Bill Paxton. Add to that a revenge plot that almost always works (a black ops agent is framed and betrayed and seeks revenge) and you have a pretty solid film.

The trailer was awesome, the kind that made me wish the film started right then. I don’t know if it will open well, especially considering there is another action film with a female protagonist opening the same day, but it’s not for lack of trying.

1. Contraband (Universal, 2,863 Theaters, 110 Minutes, Rated R): Saturday Night Live has ruined Mark Wahlberg for me. In seeing trailers for this film, where Wahlberg is trying to be all bad ass, I keep expecting him to say “Say Hi to your mother for me” after every line of dialogue.

Wahlberg plays a man who left a life of crime behind to start a family. When his brother-in-law botches a job for a drug lord (Giovanni Ribisi), Wahlberg has to return to smuggling to not only save his brother-in-law but also his wife and children. When his attempts to bring millions of dollars of fake bills into the US hits a snag, his family comes into jeopardy.

Since a threat to his family motivates him to action, and his family still ends up in danger after he does the job, the job itself seems a bit superfluous. You can still show him backsliding into a life of crime to help his family without the side trip to Panama.

This is the first of two films starring Kate Beckinsale opening this month (the second, Underworld: Awakening, opens next week). So, Kate Beckinsale fans are in luck. However, if your interest in Beckinsale is more prurient in nature, then the film you want to see is the one where she does deep knee bends is leather bodysuits.

2. Joyful Noise (Warner Brothers, 2,735 Theaters, 117 Minutes, Rated PG-13): I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this film probably wouldn’t have been made if it wasn’t for the popularity of Glee. I imagine that the powers that be believe that, hey, if people are willing to go gaga over a secular choir, then they might spend money to see a film about a spiritual choir.

I mean, that HAS to be the reason this film was made. Because it’s not like the world was asking for a film where Queen Latifah put Dolly Parton in a headlock (and, really, did you see the trailer? Okay, Parton is in her 60s and has had so many facelifts that any pressure on her face could cause the skin on her face to snap loose with such a force that it would break windows, but if you are going to make a plot point out of one person putting another in a headlock, at least make it look like it is a real headlock and not what Latifah slaps on Parton here).

The film appears to be the standard “underdog facing incredible odds yet overcoming them to win while learning something in the process” film with inordinate amounts of treacly spiritual preaching slathered on. If that is you kind of thing, then I guess this film is for you. If not, well, I doubt you’d be going to the film even if it looked well made and not completely horrible.

3. Beauty And The Beast 3D (Disney, 2,625 Theaters, 84 Minutes, Rated G): Okay, admission time. Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney film of all time. Yes, all time. Something about that film just resonated with me.

In any other circumstance, I would be overjoyed to see this film back in theaters. However, this is the latest in Disney’s blatant cash grab tactic of re-releasing their later era animated films in 3-D. And that’s what it basically is–a blatant, stinking attempt to wring more cash out of your pockets by milking the 3-D trend for all its worth.

There is no reason why this film needs to be in 3-D. Adding a 3-D process to the film does not enhance the viewing experience at all, and will not make the film better than it already is. All it means is that you have wear a bulky pair of 3-D glasses to see a movie that you can see perfectly fine in 2-D in the comfort of your own home.

But The Lion King 3-D was a financial success, and converting these films to 3-D is probably cheap and easy, so we’ll probably see more of them. There are theaters showing this film in the original 2-D. I fully recommend that you take advantage of them and see one of the best films of all time on the big screen. But it’s really not worth paying the extra money to see it in 3-D.

1.Whiteout (Warner Brothers, 2,700+ Theaters, 96 Minutes, Rated R): When the graphic novel this film was based on was released first came out, I was led to believe that it was crime fiction, basically of a U.S. Marshall chasing a killer through Antarctica.

But certain ads for the film adaptation make it out to be more supernatural in nature., like Alien only with a frozen wasteland replacing outer space. So, I don’t know which is which, but just keep in mind that when you go see it that there might be a bit of the old bait and switch going on.

Also confusing is the scene in the TV ad where Kate Beckinsale is wandering around in her skivvies. I know Antarctic stations have to be heated, but it’s still got to be chilly. Put on a robe!

2. Sorority Row (Summit Entertainment, 2,500+ Theaters, 101 Minutes, Rated R): I’m not saying I approve, but comely young lasses are often the popular victims in these hack and slash movies. So, I have to ask, is this the first film set at a sorority house? It can’t be, can it?

Well, anyway, this film is a revenge vehicle along the lines of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Apparently, the sisters cover-up the death of one of their own after a prank gone wrong. Somebody doesn’t like this, and begins picking them off one by one.

The cast is somewhat interesting. The two most famous girls among the sisters are famous not for their acting skills but for being the daughter of a famous actor and actress (Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore) and staring on a “reality” show (The Hills‘ Audrina Patridge). Don’t fear, there is a famous name in the cast. Carrie Fisher has a role in the film, and any movie starring her can’t be all bad.

3. Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself (Lionsgate, 2,100 + Theaters, 113 Theater, Rated PG-13):Well, apparently the film world isn’t done with Tyler Perry yet. He’s been averaging two films a year, usually all are based on his plays. Will he ever run out?

Now, I have yet to see a Tyler Perry movie and I don’t think Mr. Perry would take time away from counting his money to be bothered by that. But I just don’t see the appeal of his films, from what little I’ve seen of their trailers.

Here is the summary for this film from IMDB:

When Madea catches sixteen-year-old Jennifer and her two younger brothers looting her home, she decides to take matters into her own hands and delivers the young delinquents to the only relative they have: their aunt April. A heavy-drinking nightclub singer who lives off of Raymond, her married boyfriend, April wants nothing to do with the kids. But her attitude begins to change when Sandino, a handsome Mexican immigrant looking for work, moves into April’s basement room. Making amends for his own troubled past, Sandino challenges April to open her heart. And April soon realizes she must make the biggest choice of her life: between her old ways with Raymond and the new possibilities of family, faith … and even true love.

Kind of all over the place, right? Yeah, doesn’t really appeal to me, even before considering that Madea is played by Perry in drag. But he does have an audience and a limitless supply of work to bring to the screen. So I doubt that we will ever see the last of him.

1. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Sony/ Screen Gems, 2,942 Theaters, 93 Minutes, Rated R): It’s not often that you have an actor with two films hitting wide release in the same day. It’s even rarer still when it’s two films as diametrically opposed as Michaels Sheen’s two films this week. His portray of David Frost in Frost/Nixon opens in wider release this week, and he reprises his role as Lucien in this third installment of the Underworld franchise. Don’t try to take both in on the same day or your head might explode.

Yes, the franchise returns. Gone are Kate Beckinsale and her leather pantsuit (but we get fellow Brit Rhona Mitra as a replacement, if you are interested in that sort of thing). But what we get is the origin of the vampire/werewolf war which was the driving force in the film series to this point.

It appears that the vampires play were aristocrats who treated the werewolves, a.k.a. Lycans, as slaves until one day the Lycans decided to revolt. That process is on display in this film. This might be of interest to fans of the franchise, but will anybody else want to see this?

2. Inkheart (Warner Brothers (New Line), 2,655 Theaters, 106 Minutes, Rated PG): Yet another kid-friendly book being adapted for the big screen. Times have been tough for these types of movies but this film has more going for it than the other did.

First off, the adaptation was done by David Lindsay-Abaire. He is a relative screenwriting novice–Robots, this film, and a take on Spider-Man 4 are his only credits. But he’s a stunningly brilliant playwright, known for plays such as Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole.

And you can’t discount a cast that features Helen Mirren, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. The plot revolves around a man who can make characters from novels come true. Chaos ensues when he releases some evil characters. Now, he and his family must collect the bad guys before they do any permanent damage in the real world.

Opening in wider release:

1. Frost/Nixon (Universal, 1,097 Theaters, 122 Minutes, Rated R): This excellent film hits a wider release. If it is coming to a theater near you, make sure you make an effort to go see it.

We reviewed this film, which you can read here, but let’s briefly tell you what you need to know.

Adapted from the West End and Broadway play, this film is set up more like a boxing film than a bio pic, and it absolutely excells with that structure. The acting is great from top to bottom. Sheen and Langella reprise their stage roles as the titular characters, and are given able support by Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, and especially Kevin Bacon.

Again, well worth your film going money, if it is opening near you.

2. Revolutionary Road (Paramount/ Vantage, 1,058 Theaters, 119 Minutes, Rated R): This film got a lot of attention being that it was the first time Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunited since Titanic. But anybody expecting a romantic reunion is bound to be disappointed, because, if the preview is any indication, they spend  most of the movie shouting at each other.

They play a young couple with common interests and dreams of Paris who fall in love and get married. Paris is replaced by suburbia, the dreams by obligations, and their share interests are soon forgotten in the monotony of a 9 to 5 life. The fact that their lives turn out to be not what they intended cause them to grow distant, and affairs and discord soon follow.

This film is rumored to score poorly in test screenings, but can any film by Sam Mendes and with this cast be all that bad? That being said, two hours of Leo screaming at Kate and vice versa could be too much to bear.

3. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight, 1,411 Theaters, 120 Minutes, Rated R): It might not be completely accurate to call this film this year’s feel-good flick, because the film shows in brutal detail the caste system in Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay), India. But it definitely holds the title of the little indie film that could.

The film, adapted from a short story by Vikas Swarup, deal with a boy from the slums of Mumbai who goes on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and gets one question away from the million dollars.  This rises questions with the producers and the authorities as to how a poor, uneducated slum-dwelling teenager can know answers even educated higher class citizens cannot. Suspected of cheating, he must go through how he learned the answers or else face serious trouble.

This film has been a critical darling and won many major awards, including the Golden Globe.