Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Oct. 22 

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NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST Nick and Nora (no "h") were the sophisticated sleuths played by William Powell and Myrna Loy in the popular The Thin Man movies back in the 1930s and '40s, and this married team never encountered a criminal they couldn't bring to justice. By contrast, the Nick and Norah in this tone-deaf feature are vanquished by the piece's villains, who are revealed to be director Peter Sollet and scripter Lorene Scafaria (adapting the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan). In short, this is one Thin Movie. Michael Cera, who needs to play a Norman Bates-like character to shake things up, stars as Nick, a high school kid crushed by being dumped by Tris (Alexis Dziena), the sort of vapid princess who in real life wouldn't even give someone like Nick the time of day, let alone six months of quality dating time. Through plot contrivances too laborious to outline here, Nick and Tris' pal Norah (Kat Dennings) end up spending an entire after-hours session combing New York for both Norah's drunken friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) and a secret jam session by the city's latest "It" band. Dennings displays a slightly off-kilter personality that marks her as someone to keep watching (she's also appeared in Charlie Bartlett and The House Bunny), and Cera's teddy-bear cynicism – his wisecracking character is sweet even when trying to be caustic – provides extra zip to his better lines. But for a film set amidst the hustle and bustle of late-night NYC, this is one lethargic picture, with Sollet's inert direction bringing nothing to the party. For an infinitely better movie about hipsters looking for love, wait for In Search of a Midnight Kiss to hit DVD. **

NIGHTS IN RODANTHE Diane Lane and the Tuscan countryside prove to be a more dynamic duo than Diane Lane and the Outer Banks, an assertion that immediately becomes clear when placing Under the Tuscan Sun and Nights in Rodanthe side by side. The former made the most of its setting and its star, resulting in a winning romantic comedy whose love-struck spirit rubbed off on audience members eager to lap up its sense of joie de vivre. The coastal-Carolina-shot Rodanthe, on the other hand, starts off well as Tuscan Sun's more serious-minded cousin, but it eventually sinks under the weight of the shameless plot devices thrust upon it by author Nicholas Sparks and adapters Ann Peacock and John Romano. Lane, teaming with Richard Gere for the third time (following 1984's The Cotton Club and 2002's Unfaithful), plays Adrienne Willis, who agrees to look after her best friend's (Viola Davis) beachfront inn at the same time that her philandering husband (Christopher Meloni) is begging her to let him come back. Gere co-stars as Paul Flanner, a doctor brooding over a minor surgery procedure that went tragically wrong. As the only two people stuck at the inn, Adrienne and Paul open up to each other and gradually fall in love. For a while, Nights in Rodanthe works as a mature and even touching drama, but then the melodramatic devices take over with the force of a hurricane. And speaking of hurricane, the second-act emergence of this force of nature is but one of the hoary aspects that sink the production, along with a sour twist that is as expected as it is defeatist. **

THE WOMEN The 1939 screen version of The Women, based on Clare Booth Luce's play and helmed by "woman's director" George Cukor, has been refashioned as a Sex and the City wanna-be, in the process losing the smoldering conflicts and zesty subplots of its classic predecessor. In that version, Norma Shearer's angelic society woman had to decide whether to stay married to a husband who dared to dally with Joan Crawford's skanky shopgirl. With nary a male in sight but an all-female-cast to die for (Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine were also part of the ensemble), the picture examined females as complicated beings forced to simultaneously respond to social duties, duplicitous acquaintances, and the demands of their own independent hearts. Predictably, this new version opens with a nod toward modern materialism and then proceeds to offer contemporary stereotypes rather than memorable individuals. Here, everything has been smoothed out to the point of tepidity: Eva Mendes (as the hubby-swiper) is merely naughty where Crawford was lethal, and Russell's role as a backstabbing "frenemy" has been transformed into Annette Bening's tough-yet-tender magazine editor. Meanwhile, Meg Ryan (as the jilted spouse) doesn't stray too far from her established screen persona, while Jada Pinkett Smith's casting in a worthless role (cut it, and the film doesn't change) demonstrates that writer-director Diane English was more interested in covering all demographics (black and lesbian, in the case of Smith and her character) than in making any salient points about 21st-century girl power. **