Picks and Pans Review: Now Playing

By Leah Rozen, CHRISTINA TAPPER, Lesley Messer

UPDATED 12/03/2007 at 01:00 AM EST • Originally published 12/03/2007 at 01:00 AM EST

THIS CHRISTMAS The Whitfield clan—three brothers and three sisters—gathers for Christmas at Mom's house in this convivial comedy. They bicker and spill secrets, but since everybody loves each other, of course it's going to turn out all right. The holiday treat here is watching such gifted performers as Loretta Devine, Regina King and Sharon Leal (above, right, with Mekhi Phifer) strut their sassy stuff. Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba and singer Chris Brown lend able backup. (PG-13)

    

BEOWULF The ancient epic poem upon which this eye-popping, computer-animated action saga is based gets the comic-book treatment here: lots of battles, blood and guts and a curvy facsimile of Angelina Jolie. It's energetic, but no more. (PG-13)

    

HITMAN Timothy Olyphant (left) plays Agent 47, a chrome dome bred from birth to be a professional assassin in a stylishly shot but stupefyingly generic action thriller. The film is based on the popular video game of the same name, which may explain why Hitman's plot and dialogue seem to have been written by a computer programmed to simply replicate elements from a string of earlier action hits. The only mystery worth contemplating here is how, in between his constant killings, Agent 47 finds the time to keep shaving his shiny pate. (R)