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"Forgettable" probably isn't a word you'd expect to use to describe a film starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson and Sam Shepard. But unfortunately, that's one of the most apt when pondering "Safe House." Directed by Daniel Espinosa from a script by David Guggenheim (not to be confused with "An Inconvenient Truth" director Davis Guggenheim), this is a frenetically paced jumble of shaky-cam tricks and quick edits, dizzying car chases and deafening shootouts.

There's little mystery about "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island." This 3-D sort-of sequel wears its formula-for-dollars purpose with pride, delivering a dash of cinematic nonsense that represents Hollywood calculation at its shrewdest and most shameless.

The crazy eyes and idiosyncratic drawl of Woody Harrelson are enough to carry the dirty cop study "Rampart," but even such powers as those can't make engaging this weary L.A. noir. Without Harrelson's inherent intrigue, the heavy-handed provocations of "Rampart" would be difficult to suffer.

"The Woman in Black" very nearly suffocates under the mounting weight of its gothic kitsch — an abandoned house, child ghosts, spooky dolls, oh my! — but nevertheless summons ornately crafted, old-fashioned suspense. This is the second film for British director James Watkins, whose previous "Eden Lake" gathered an intriguing story about class out of a confrontation in the woods between a vacationing couple (Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly) and a violent gang of youths.

It owes a great debt to the found-footage concept behind "The Blair Witch Project," has some of the aesthetic and tonal touches of "Cloverfield" and probes the same sorts of philosophical notions about the burden of power that serve as the basis for the "X-Men" series.

If a movie is cheesy and knows it's cheesy — if it embraces the soft, gooey texture and pungent aroma of its own fromage — does that make it any more palatable as a meal? That is the question to ponder while watching "Big Miracle," a rousing, feel-good, family-friendly animal adventure which has the added benefit of being based on a true story.

Lean and scary, "The Innkeepers" was shot in 17 days in a quaint Connecticut hotel called the Yankee Pedlar, where writer-director Ti West stayed while making his previous movie, "The House of the Devil." West works quickly and cheaply, and his latest, like "Devil,"flies in the face of almost every other kind of fright out there at the moment.

How wonderfully unpredictable the movies can be. Who would have thought that, at nearly 60, Liam Neeson would be one of the top action stars around? It's the same, counterintuitive formula that made Michael Keaton a good Batman and the Rock a believable Tooth Fairy.

The so-called thriller "Man on a Ledge," about a disgraced cop who threatens to jump off a building to divert attention from a heist going on across the street, isn't even implausible in a fun way. You see a movie like "Ocean's 11" or "Tower Heist" (which is thematically similar to this with its wily have-nots stealing from the filthy-rich haves) and you suspend some disbelief because they have an irresistible, knowingly giddy energy about them.

The role of Albert Nobbs is one that's been near to Glenn Close's heart for a while. She first played it 30 years ago off-Broadway and reprises it now in a project she's been working for some time to bring to the screen. Her dedication is obvious in watching "Albert Nobbs," based on a short story about a woman living as a man and working as a posh hotel waiter in order to survive in 19th century Ireland.

For Lynne Ramsay, motives are vague, sometimes unknowable things. In the Scottish director's films — three features, including the new "We Need to Talk About Kevin — characters act out awkwardly and unpredictably, baffled and nullified by deadly predicaments that are, in some measure, their own making.

In "Red Tails," the famed Tuskegee Airmen get the John Wayne-style heroic rendering they very much deserve, but in a hackneyed and weirdly context-less story that does them a disservice. Long a pet project of his, George Lucas self-financed the film and has said he hopes "Red Tails" will prove there's an audience for all-black movies.

A straight-up action picture may sound unusual coming from Steven Soderbergh, but as he's repeatedly demonstrated throughout his career, he's keen to experiment with every genre imaginable. And if you look closely at his latest, "Haywire," you'll find it reveals glimmers of some of his greatest hits.

Yes, "Contraband" follows the tried-and-true One Last Job formula. Yes, Mark Wahlberg is nestled deep within his comfort zone as a former master criminal who's lived a dangerous life and gone straight. Still, this is a solid genre picture that knows exactly what it is, has no delusions of grandeur and carries out its task in entertaining and occasionally even suspenseful fashion.

If some incarnation of "Glee" were to be developed for the Christian Broadcasting Network, it would probably look a lot like "Joyful Noise." You've got your squeaky-clean reworkings of pop tunes from various decades, which are intended to please viewers of all ages; some romance, although nothing too hot and heavy; and a large dollop of prayer, as the characters struggle to find answers with the Lord's help.

For Lynne Ramsay, motives are vague, sometimes unknowable things. In the Scottish director's films — three features, including the new "We Need to Talk About Kevin — characters act out awkwardly and unpredictably, baffled and nullified by deadly predicaments that are, in some measure, their own making.

Please be silent behind the screen. Backstage at the 1927 Hollywood premiere of his latest screen triumph, film star George Valentin — played with irresistible zest by Jean Dujardin — waits for the crowd's response. Standing in front of the sign shushing the backstagers, he hears the applause.

There are extraordinary and beautiful things in “War Horse,” enough of them to make the movie a pleasure and a worthwhile experience, though not enough to trick the eye or get you believing this movie hangs together. As messy as it is inspired, it jumps from episode to episode, lurching unexpectedly to life — more entertaining than it seemingly should be and, all the while, making you feel things, whether you want to or not.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law bicker and banter and bob and weave with significantly diminishing returns in this sequel to the 2009 smash hit "Sherlock Holmes." Director Guy Ritchie once again applies his revisionist approach to Arthur Conan Doyle's classic literary character, infusing the film with his trademark, hyperkinetic aesthetic and turning the renowned detective into a wisecracking butt-kicker.

Puns like these would be unforgivable coming from a human. From high-pitched rodents, they prompt calls for an exterminator. It starts with the title: "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked," the third in the noxiously contemporary series of new Chipmunks films.

Luckily for Tom Cruise, "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" is one of his finest action flicks, just what's needed to potentially restore some of this fallen star's box-office bankability. For director Brad Bird, though, the fourth "Mission," rock solid as it is, ranks only as his second-best action movie, after the animated smash "The Incredibles.

It's not easy being mean, as Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody's latest project, "Young Adult" — directed by her "Juno" collaborator, Jason Reitman — goes about illustrating with an intriguing, unsettled blend of pity and pitilessness. Thirty-seven-year-old borderline alcoholic Mavis Gary, handled with unsentimental aplomb by Charlize Theron, may have left her hometown of Mercury, Minn.

Mildly funny adventures in extreme baby-sitting, director David Gordon Green's "The Sitter" finds its emblematic moment in the scene of Sam Rockwell, playing a Brooklyn drug dealer, joking around and then suddenly blasting one of his minions in the foot in a realistically painful way.

Scrambling to accommodate its Big Gulp of an ensemble cast, for which disaster movie maven Irwin Allen would've killed, "New Year's Eve" does for its holiday what last year's "Valentine's Day" did for Valentine's Day. If this one's a hit, as was "V Day" ($200 million worldwide), surely we can expect "Presidents Day.

Despite the ado about its NC-17 rating, "Shame" is the least-sexy movie about sex you will ever see. Michael Fassbender lays himself bare, literally and metaphorically, as a sex addict prowling an increasingly dark and dangerous New York City; one of the first shots is of his character, Brandon, walking naked through his chicly sparse bachelor pad in the unforgiving morning light.

A frisky new film showcasing some old pals made out of felt, charm and some kind of genius, the Disney release "The Muppets" overcomes a jaded streak reflecting its makers' nervousness about selling Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and the gang to an audience unfamiliar with "Sesame Street" (a Muppets chapter conspicuously left out of Disney's production notes) or "The Muppet Show" or the best of the earlier feature-length films, "The Great Muppet Caper" being my favorite.

The fourth film in the "Twilight" series reveals a flash or two of real filmmaking (mostly in a suggestively grotesque birthing sequence), enough to save it from pure lousiness. But a significant number of its 117 minutes do seem like hours, and whenever certain actors take the lead and set the pace of the dialogue, time itself begins to crawl backward and the breaking dawn begins to feel like yesterday's breaking dawn, or last Tuesday's.

The penguins are as adorable as ever in "Happy Feet Two." Yet a couple of shrimp-like krill at the bottom of the food chain almost steal the show in this animated sequel that sticks to the formula of the original while adding enough variety to give it a life of its own.

"The tropics make it difficult to mope," observes the beleaguered father and conflicted landowner at the heart of the novel "The Descendants." Written by Kaui Hart Hemmings, the 2007 book expanded upon Hemmings' short story "The Minor Wars," and the tale is set on two Hawaiian islands — parts of the world, as Hemmings writes, where the men of influence resemble "bums or stuntmen" on permanent vacation.

In Judd Apatow's "Funny People," Adam Sandler played a middle-age comedian whose career was built on a series of popular but absurdly low-brow movies. The movies are trotted out in faux trailers: "Redux," in which he plays a 6-month-old baby; "My Best Friend Is a Robot," with Owen Wilson as the robot; and, most memorably, "Mer-man," where Sandler plays a masculine mermaid.

In Clint Eastwood's new film, "J. Edgar," a 1930 movie theater audience makes its preference clear. Whereas J. Edgar Hoover's pre-movie promotion reel about G-men and the FBI draws impatient boos, a trailer for the upcoming James Cagney flick "The Public Enemy" inspires hoots and applause.

"Tower Heist" is an ensemble, and a strong one at that, led by Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck and Tea Leoni. But Brett Ratner's blast of an action comedy truly brings out the best in Eddie Murphy, something many of us may have forgotten even existed.

In the future, humans will be genetically engineered to live to 25. The wealthiest citizens — the ones who either "come from time," the way people used to come from money, or who have triumphed in this futuristic version of Darwinian capitalism — can re-up on their time clock, while others expire.

Comic effrontery is the Bic that lights the bong in the "Harold & Kumar" movies, but willfully strained outrageousness can turn sour like that. For a definition of "that," there's "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas," the weakest of the three. Here, the boy-men — now 30ish men-boys, dealing with adult concerns and relationships, in addition to their perpetual White Castle jones — hunt down a Christmas tree, mix it up with Ukrainian gangsters, briefly turn into Claymation-type animated versions of themselves, consort with virgins and meet Santa.

If Batman and the X-Men get prequels, why not Hunter S. Thompson? He was certainly a superhero of a kind, just one whose powers mainly consisted of consuming copious amounts of alcohol while still, somehow, churning out wildly colorful, raging dispatches from the road.

The "Shrek" movies may not even exist as far we're concerned in "Puss in Boots," which is fine, because they just kept getting worse; last year's "Shrek Forever After," in 3-D, felt especially flat. But the franchise reboots anew here, if you'll pardon the pun, with great energy, creativity and aplomb.

A flamboyant, funny, sexy performance from Rhys Ifans livens up "Anonymous," which is often a heavy-handed and needlessly complicated exploration of the theory that maybe William Shakespeare didn't really write all those plays and sonnets after all. Instead, the film suggests, Ifans' Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the true author but he had to disguise his identity because his writing so often provided pointed criticism of royal scandals and foibles, and because the mere thought of involvement with the theater seemed so indecent.

Whatever your relationship (ardent, platonic, nonexistent) to the Alexander Dumas story about Athos, Porthos, Aramis and the lionhearted musketeer intern, D'Artagnan, there's a word for the latest screen edition of "The Three Musketeers": whatthehell? Seriously: What the hell? Those who favored the callous aggravations of the recent Guy Ritchie-directed "Sherlock Holmes," a film without which "The Three Musketeers" would be unthinkable, may forgive the grating, chaotic brand of storytelling and filmmaking here more easily than I.

With recent history and the current winds so stiff with economic grief, it's no wonder films such as the recent layoff-centered drama "The Company Men" struggle to find a sympathetic paying audience. That picture and the new, more interesting "Margin Call" operate not as cries from the heart, gut punches or anything you'd find in the early 1930s, say, when Hollywood studios produced an astonishing (and often astonishingly fierce) variety of antidotes to the Depression.

The country-twang remake of "Footloose" strives to give us a more down-home experience than the original film. But is a more authentic "Footloose" — with less dancing, yet — really the way to go? The first one's fun largely because it's hooey, as synthetic as most of the fabrics worn by Kevin Bacon.

The slippery, effective new version of "The Thing" serves as a prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter film, explaining what went down, down in Antarctica, after the intergalactic thing thawed and began eviscerating humans plus a husky or two. Those disinclined toward Carpenter's version, as I am, may be surprised at how the new release nearly matches the gore levels the fright reached in an earlier, nondigital era of practical special effects.

Surely a richer human comedy can be made about an eccentric subculture of obsessive birders than "The Big Year," in which Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson spend a lot of time peering through binoculars at one species or another. Curious audiences will not be subjected to "Little Fockers"-level slapstick here.

When powerful men amass their armies and go to battle in a tight political race, even the most idealistic and fervent political junkies may find their faith tested, if not obliterated. It is an ugly, cynical business, full of ambitious people who will do whatever they must to survive.

"Real Steel" dresses up a bad idea — robots boxing — with all the computer effects and heavy-metal action that Hollywood can buy. But that doesn't cover up the fact that it's a bad idea. Really bad. And "Real Steel" is a really bad movie, with some embarrassingly awful moments for Hugh Jackman, whose silly Wolverine whiskers in the "X-Men" flicks seem quite distinguished compared to the outlandish trappings here.

It could have been agonizingly mawkish: the story of a young man with everything ahead of him who learns he has a rare form of spinal cancer, one that he only has a 50-percent chance of surviving. The premise alone sounds like an insufferable drag, an example of eat-your-vegetables cinema, regardless of the catharsis that might result.

Hollywood's new age of realistically raunchy, female-driven romantic comedies takes a step backward with "What's Your Number?", a dollop of forgettable fluff that's as dull and predictable as they come. If Kristen Wiig's "Bridesmaids" was a 10 and Cameron Diaz's "Bad Teacher" was a 6, then "What's Your Number?" rates a 2 or 3, straining through a similar R-rated sensibility but delivering the usual vanilla of most PG-13 romances.

Director Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” is the perfect sports movie for these cash-strapped times of efficiency maximization. It's also the best sports movie in a long time, period, as well as honestly inspirational — even though nobody knocks one into the lights, causing showers of sparks to blend in the night sky with the fireworks.

"Twilight" alumnus Taylor Lautner makes his debut as a leading man in an film tailor-made for him. "Abduction" puts Lautner in motion and never goes wrong as long as he remains in motion. The buff teen werewolf of "Twilight" plays a young man who has his world upended and finds himself on the run when enemy agents attack his home and the people he knew as his parents aren't who they say they are.

I'll be honest, in the spirit of the honestly shameless heartwarmer "Dolphin Tale." I saw it in a somewhat distracted, agitated state. Forty-five seconds into the opening credits I'm watching ocean-dwelling dolphins nosing around all sorts of potential dangers (a rusty fishing tackle box, a fateful metal crab trap), and the film's in 3-D so the dangers loom with exceptional emphasis, and the picture's premise depends on putting the eventually tailless protagonist — a real-life dolphin, Winter, played by Winter — through all sorts of adversity alongside its human protectors.

There's some grim diversion in watching Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert de Niro kill, kill, kill often while avoiding being killed, killed, killed, in the fact-based but heavily hogwashed espionage thriller "Killer Elite." But the script is a mess.

Houston's Kashmere High School was an all-black institution in the less-than-affluent Fifth Ward of the city that benefited from the presence of one dedicated, visionary and inspiring teacher. He taught music and ran the stage band, which fused jazz and the emerging funk of the late '60s and early '70s to create a legendary sound that lifted the band, the school and the entire student body to the heights of musical and academic glory.

The setting has been moved from the British countryside to the swamps of Mississippi, and the lead actors got better looking, but Rod Lurie's "Straw Dogs" is essentially identical to the 1971 Sam Peckinpah thriller he's remaking. Names, graphic details, bits of dialogue, even a parallel editing structure that unfolds during a pivotal moment — they're all here.

Like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, Ryan Gosling is simply known as the Driver in "Drive." Actually, he's barely even known as that, because the few people he comes into contact with don't really call him anything. He's a stoic loner who does exactly what the title suggests.

When you're a wife and working mother, there's this inescapable, self-imposed pressure to do everything right all the time. The idea of having it all — a great job and a loving family, a toned body and a sane mind — is as appealing as it is elusive. You're constantly letting someone down sometime, which leads to guilt, which leads to more stress — which leads to even more sleepless nights, which doesn't help anybody.

The calm is what's so startling in "Contagion" — the cool precision with which Steven Soderbergh depicts a deadly virus that spreads throughout the world, quickly claiming millions of victims. There's no great panic in his tone, no hysteria. Soderbergh has amassed a dazzling cast of Oscar winners but this is not like those '70s disaster movies that had melodrama to match their star power.

a stark black sheet on which two shirtless dudes display a dozen well-defined abs and four frightening pecs — "Warrior" should be just another slab of lunkhead cinema, a thin story designed to fill UFC coffers and bolster the big-screen ambitions of non-actor musclemen.

In "Seven Days in Utopia," a mild-mannered, young golfer has a mild meltdown in the middle of a tournament. That's followed by seven days of perspective-patching among mild-mannered, God-fearing folk in rural Texas. Faith and "fore" walk hand in hand — sort of — in this soft-centered, faith-based drama starring Lucas Black of "Friday Night Lights," "Get Low" and "Jarhead.

Classy, solid and well-acted, "The Debt" is a rare bit of meaty, intelligent filmmaking during the ordinarily dreary final days of summer. With a cast that includes Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and a tremendous Jessica Chastain, led by "Shakespeare in Love" director John Madden, it seems it would be hard to go wrong.

There's something old-fashioned about "A Good Old Fashioned Orgy," but it's not the orgy. Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck's R-rated comedy doesn't fit into today's comedy categories. Maybe that's because Gregory and Huyck (a veteran TV writing team making their film directing debuts) came up with the idea in 1997 and have been working on it sporadically ever since.

A brawny B-action picture with a gorgeous, graceful woman wreaking havoc at its center: Yup, "Colombiana" is a Luc Besson movie. The director of "La Femme Nikita" and "The Fifth Element" serves as co-writer and producer here, but this is very much a spin-off of his brand, a continuation of the kind of stereotype- and gravity-defying characters he's made his name on.

Size shouldn't matter when it comes to scary creatures. After all, plenty of people are terrified of rats and spiders. Yet savage and ugly as the tiny monsters are in "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark," they're not as frightening as the filmmakers would have you believe.

Paul Rudd hops from one sofa to another to another as the title character in "Our Idiot Brother," and that's sort of what the film itself does, too. Rudd stars as an amiable, ambling dude named Ned who has no real goals in life; what he does have is a guilelessness that consistently gets him into trouble, both with his family and with the law.

You don't have to know a thing about Formula 1 racing to become engrossed by "Senna." That's because director Asif Kapadia has structured his documentary with the pacing, tone and fluidity of a feature film. In tracing the brief and brilliant career of the late Brazilian auto racing star Ayrton Senna, Kapadia relies entirely on archival footage, some of which has never been seen before and much of which comes from inside the vehicle Senna himself is driving.

Yes, "Fright Night" is a remake of the 1985 horror comedy. No, there is no originality left in Hollywood. But at least this new version stays true to its origins by having a bit of cheeky fun, and the way it contemporizes the story is really rather clever.

Maybe it was all more resonant, more poignant on the page: the many highs and lows and major life shifts that occur during the decades-spanning friendship/romance between Emma and Dexter in "One Day." But here they feel so cursory and rushed, it's as if we're watching a filmed version of the CliffsNotes of David Nicholls' best-seller.

No one ever turns into a giant snake in the new "Conan the Barbarian." That, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with this remake: The knowing sense of big, ridiculous fun that marked the 1982 original is gone, and in its place we get a self-serious series of generic sword battles and expository conversations.

The low-budget British aliens-invade-the-'hood thriller "Attack the Block" reminded me of Rick's famous line in "Casablanca," his reply when Maj. Strasser asks about how he'll feel with the Nazis in New York. "Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.

"Now that this has happened, what are my options?" Sophie asks her new thrill, Marshall, in "The Future." Sophie's long-term boyfriend, Jason, does not yet know about the affair. "Well," Marshall says. "Traditionally people either tell the truth, or they lie.

For the f-word in heavy, conventional rotation, go see "The Change-Up." Which is another way of saying there's not much reason to go see "The Change-Up," unless you're an unusually big fan of Ryan Reynolds or Jason Bateman. But for the same word in heavy, unconventional and often very funny usage, in a disarming black comedy set in County Galway, Ireland, feast your ears on the sweetly profane dialogue of writer-director John Michael McDonagh as heard in "The Guard.

My nerves are still jangling from having seen "Point Blank" a few weeks ago, and that was before the shut-the-country-down! rhetoric brought America to its present state. But enough about real-world aggravations. Let's talk about a movie, and not just a movie, but a movie-movie, in the spirit of the 2006 thriller "Tell No One.

A class act such as “The Help” is rare enough in Hollywood. Coming at the tail end of summer blockbuster season, it’s almost unheard of. “The Help,” which opens in theaters today, is the sort of film that studios typically save for the holiday prestige season in November or December, when Academy Awards voters start thinking ahead to the films they want to anoint.

If this has indeed been The Summer of the R-Rated Comedy, with each new movie striving to one-up its predecessors in getting down and dirty, then we're going out with a whimper with "30 Minutes or Less." And that's ironic, given that the movie is all about something — or someone — going out with a bang.

"Glee: The 3D Concert Movie" makes you realize just how crucial Jane Lynch is to the Fox TV show's success. She's nowhere to be found in this peppy concert film, shot over two days during the recent North American tour, and her trademark snark as cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester is sorely missed.

"The Change-Up" begins with a poop joke. And not just any poop joke — this is projectile poop from a baby girl into her daddy's mouth during a bleary-eyed, middle-of-the-night diaper change. Oh yes, it goes there. Early. You'd think that would be a frightening harbinger of what's to come over the next two hours, but it's not — which makes it even more frustrating when you realize that it didn't need to startle us off the top in such crass and obvious fashion.

Silly humans. We're so arrogant. We see a cute, cuddly baby chimp, assign all kinds of familiar characteristics to it and raise it with the loving playfulness we'd give our own children, only to find that the creature's unpredictable and ferocious animal nature wins out in the end.

"Another Earth" is quietly and movingly out of this world. Director Mike Cahill has woven sci-fi imaginings and quantum physics theories of parallel universes into a provocative meditation on the prospect of rewriting your life history. It is no simple task to spin such abstract notions into smart entertainment, but there is such a strong creative voice stirring in Cahill's first feature that it's easy to forgive the shortcomings.

"Sarah's Key" is more powerful than you expect, maybe even more powerful than it should be. An emotional detective story based on an international best-seller by Tatiana de Rosnay, its Holocaust-connected narrative goes back and forth between moments of strength and those that fall flat.

For a movie that intends to be rooted in a recognizable and insightful reality, "Crazy Stupid Love" features an awful lot of moments that clang in a contrived, feel-good manner. Because you see, it's simultaneously trying to charm us. Sometimes, it achieves that goal.

The genre mash-up of "Cowboys & Aliens" is more a mush-up, an action yarn aiming to be both science fiction and Old West adventure but doing neither all that well. The filmmakers — and there are a lot of them, among them director Jon Favreau, 11 producers or executive producers including Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, plus half a dozen credited writers — start with a title that lays out a simple but cool premise: invaders from the skies shooting it out with guys on horseback.

There really should be a disclaimer somewhere, even in small print, explaining Hollywood's ill-advised tinkering on Lisa See's novel "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan." "Inspired by" at least would tip off See's readers that the film version is far from a genuine adaptation of her tale of friendship found and lost between two women enduring the cruel indifference, even abuse, laid on their sex in 19th century China.

Cupid drew a sharply aimed arrow when he spied a South Carolina-born beauty queen and future tabloid superstar named Joyce McKinney, the subject of Errol Morris' latest study in magnificent obsession. The film goes by "Tabloid," and it's one of the director's most squirrely matchups of form and content.

Let Tony Stark make the wisecracks and Nick Fury give the intimidating commands. As Steve Rogers, Chris Evans brings an earnest dignity and intelligence to "Captain America: The First Avenger," the final Marvel Comics set-up for next summer's all-star blockbuster "The Avengers.

Though self-consciously set in the bicoastal Hollywood axis of New York-Los Angeles, "Friends with Benefits" more properly takes place amid the movie world of romantic comedies. It aims to ditch schmaltz and replace it with snap, the kind found in the classic rom-coms of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn or Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," a poster of which hangs above a busy bed in "Friends with Benefits.

Musical groups come together and they come apart, and even the ones that come apart occasionally get back together for gigs and another fan-tantalizing prospect of a new album. So it is with A Tribe Called Quest, the subject of debut feature filmmaker Michael Rapaport's bracing documentary — a reminder, part "Behind the Music" and part something better, that even artists professing love and togetherness have a hard time keeping it going.

"A Better Life" is a curious picture in every way: curious about the undocumented residents of Los Angeles and, less helpfully, curious in its mixture of sincerity and slick manipulation. Without giving the game away entirely, this story of a Mexican-born gardener, his at-risk teenage son and a stolen truck culminates in a scene in which the excellent leading actor, Demian Bichir — Esteban on TV's "Weeds," Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh's "Che," a veteran of dozens of Spanish-language film and theater projects — confronts his son, Luis, played by Jose Julian.

If last year's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" marked the beginning of the end with a gripping feeling of doom and gloom, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" wraps things up once and for all on a note of melancholy. Oh, it's dramatic, to be sure: gorgeous, somber and startling as the young wizard faces his destiny and fights the evil Lord Voldemort.

Winnie the Pooh tends to amble unhurriedly through his days, enjoying his life and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood at his own pace. But "Winnie the Pooh," the movie, couldn't have come along at a better time. It is the ideal alternative to all those big, shiny, effects-laden spectacles that tend to dominate during the summer — animated or otherwise.

The devilishly talented British director James Marsh made "Man on Wire," a marvelous documentary blending archival footage and sly reenactments about the French wire-walker who, in 1974, stunned the world by inching his way across a metal strand illegally strung between the unfinished towers of the World Trade Center.

"Horrible Bosses" wallows in silliness — gleefully, and without an ounce of remorse or self-consciousness — and even though you're a grown-up and you know you should know better, you will be happy to wallow right along, as well. It's a film that's wildly, brazenly stupid — but also, you know, fun.

Movies where humans and animals converse are a bad idea in principle, and Kevin James' "Zookeeper" is not here to prove that interspecies ensembles have simply been a misunderstood, underappreciated sub-genre. "Zookeeper" is as dumb as they come, the movie that finally allows Adam Sandler to lend annoying voice to a Capuchin monkey as it talks incessantly about flinging poop around.

"The Last Mountain" is a damning look at Big Coal and its landscape-decimating practices, a litany of disheartening statistics and enraging testimony. But director Bill Haney leavens the lament with a moving portrait of the West Virginia residents who are standing up to the bulldozing — physical and spiritual — to save an Appalachian peak from the fate of its neighbors.

Watching "Page One: Inside the New York Times" is like talking to a smart person with a severe case of attention-deficit disorder; a lot of what you hear is intriguing, but you wish he or she could stick to the point. Though it's blessed with a strong subject and some memorable characters and situations, this fitfully engaging documentary can't settle on anything even close to a single theme or line of inquiry.

So "Monte Carlo" turns out to be a lot easier to take than both "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" and "Larry Crowne." You never know. Here's the sort of hardened show business veteran we have in Selena Gomez, who spent two seasons way back in her preteens on "Barney & Friends.

"Larry Crowne" serves as a reminder that you can have two of the most likable, bankable stars on the planet together, but strong writing is crucial to making them shine. Even the combined, blinding brilliance of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts can't salvage the corny, contrived script — which Hanks, who also directed the film, co-wrote.

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon," a work of ineffable soullessness and persistent moral idiocy, concludes with Chicago taking it in the shorts for 50-odd minutes, at the hands of the Decepticons in an alien takeover scored, partially, to an emo-ballad mourning the "cataclysm" of it all.

"Bad Teacher" is exactly the one-joke movie that you probably expect it to be, but there are enough variations and shadings of that one joke to sustain its brief running time — just barely. Cameron Diaz plays ... a bad teacher. She secretly sips airline-size booze bottles during class, doesn't bother to learn her students' names and figures that showing them movies about education like "Stand and Deliver" and "Dangerous Minds" is just as good as educating them herself.

Pixar's track record has been close to impeccable for turning out intelligent, emotionally rich, beautifully detailed animated films, with plenty of humor and heart to appeal to movie lovers of all ages. But the weak link in the chain, at least from a narrative standpoint, has always been 2006's "Cars," with its two-dimensional talking autos and hokey, borrowed tale of small-town life.

For you fans who can't get enough of Conan O'Brien on his late-night TBS show, and who are game to revisit the tumultuous time when NBC's squeeze play put him out of a job while reinstating Jay Leno at "The Tonight Show," a new documentary film should be right up your alley.

Remember when big, summer blockbusters were fun — when they were a light, clever and entertaining escape? That notion apparently eluded the makers of "Green Lantern," a joyless amalgamation of expository dialogue and special effects that aren't especially special.

The charming 1938 children's book "Mr. Popper's Penguins," by Richard and Florence Atwater and with wonderful illustrations by Robert Lawson, ends with a "No, thank you" to Hollywood. Mr. Tom Popper, a poor house painter, is inundated with penguins after being sent one from Admiral Drake in Antarctica.

Two dry wits chow down meals and chew the fat as they traverse the English countryside. This is not a pitch that would cut it in Hollywood, but thankfully, director Michael Winterbottom never much thinks about what Hollywood wants. Winterbottom's "The Trip" mostly delights as the filmmaker follows Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on a trek to review half a dozen restaurants.

Half the time I was laughing during the bracingly unsentimental coming-of-age comedy "Submarine," I wasn't even sure why. Writer-director Richard Ayoade's adaptation of the Joe Dunthorne debut novel isn't merely joke-funny. It's texture-funny, which is harder, considering the locale: starkly beautiful, gray-toned Swansea, Wales, onetime home of Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dylan Thomas and, according to Dunthorne, an endless supply of sexual frustration.

Cutesy little gimmicks and devices are plentiful in "Beginners." A Jack Russell terrier speaks in subtitled English, for example. A man and a woman on a giddy date skate out of a roller rink and back to the carpeted hallways of a downtown Los Angeles hotel.

"Super 8" is the rarest of things this time of year: a summer blockbuster that's completely earnest and irony-free, not filled with cheeky pop-culture references or cheesy product placement. The effects, while spectacular, also happen to be germane to the plot, and they have an intimate, tactile quality, rather than seeming too glossy or removed from reality.

Here's the kindest thing we can say about "Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer": The kids sure do work awfully hard. They mug and they mope. They run around and jump up and down. They throw themselves headlong into pratfalls and vomit gags with equal élan.

Scrambling the itinerary of the swingin' Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen song "It's Nice to Go Trav'ling," which Frank Sinatra sang on his "Come Fly With Me" album, Woody Allen has now made three pictures in London, beginning with "Match Point." Allen has announced he'll next shoot in Rome.

Mutants, it seems, are only as good as the creators assembling their chromosomes. And the mad scientists behind "X-Men: First Class" are real artists in the laboratory. Director Bryan Singer's first two installments of the "X-Men" trilogy were superior adventures, about as smart and provocative as comic-book adaptations are likely to get.

Gorgeous and ambitious, pretentious and baffling, tightly controlled yet free-flowing, "The Tree of Life" is unlike anything you've ever seen before. And yet it's very much the culmination of everything Terrence Malick has done until now — all four features he's made over the past four decades.

The roly-poly Po is back in "Kung Fu Panda 2," with high energy, some lovely visuals and peppy, playful voice work, as always, from star Jack Black. But the freshness and novelty that made the original film such a kick back in 2008 has been, well, kicked to bits.

It's hard to imagine a more half-assed attempt at cashing in a second time than "The Hangover Part II." Seriously, it feels like the script was pieced together with the help of Mad Libs, with only slightly different and raunchier details replacing those that helped the original "Hangover" from 2009 become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time (it made more than $467 million worldwide).

I've seen the fabulously acted Italian thriller "The Double Hour" twice now, and for all its intricate manipulations, it stays with me for a very simple reason: The love story at its bittersweet heart is played for keeps. Fans of "Shutter Island" make the same argument regarding that picture, and the romantic ache at its core.

A young boy in the Netherlands comes of age under Nazi occupation in the complicated, beautiful drama "Winter in Wartime." Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier) wants to help the Resistance movement and looks up to his outspoken Uncle Ben (Yorik van Wageningen) and wishes that his father (Raymond Thiry) were equally abrasive in his dealings with the Nazis as the mayor of a small Dutch town.

At two hours and 16 minutes, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" — the fourth film in the ridiculously successful Disney franchise — is the shortest in the series. But it still feels overlong and overstuffed: needlessly convoluted yet, at the same time, phoned-in.

"The First Grader," based on the true story of a Kenyan man who goes to school for the first time at age 84, hits all the feel-good notes you expect it to hit. Adversity is overcome and forgiveness is granted, lessons are learned and hearts are warmed.

There's a reason "Bridesmaids" isn't called "The Bridesmaid." Kristen Wiig, the star and co-writer (along with Annie Mumolo) of director Paul Feig's comedy, has a self-effacing streak running right alongside her deadly deadpan streak. Even when she's playing the lead, she's not really playing the lead.

Whatever you think of "The Beaver" — and it's both problematic and intriguing enough to elicit at least three contradictory responses from most moviegoers — director Jodie Foster's film reasserts the feverish, defiant, often gripping talent of actor Mel Gibson.

Will Ferrell has spent most of his career playing outsized characters. In first-time writer-director Dan Rush's "Everything Must Go," the comedian scales back his performance to explore the internal world of a broken man attempting to salvage his life.

Director Spencer Susser says the title character of "Hesher" can be seen as a heavy-metal Mary Poppins. He has a point, but only if you think of Miss Poppins as a potty-mouthed, pot-smoking pyromaniac. Like Poppins, Hesher, played by an almost unrecognizable Joseph Gordon-Levitt, takes up residence with a family, but these relatives have big problems.

"Something Borrowed" poses the question: What happens when you realize you're in love with your best friend's fiance? But the characters are either so ill-defined or unlikable, it's hard to care whether they get out of this tricky situation with their emotions and relationships intact.

The Norse gods are off to a decent, though not divine, start in "Thor," the latest movie in Marvel Comics' big-screen expansion of its superhero pantheon. Held to a more brisk running time than some superhero epics that swell to Elizabethan stage proportions, "Thor" nevertheless manages to cram in a lot of Shakespearean intrigue.

"Jumping the Broom" suggests what it might look like if Nancy Meyers directed a Tyler Perry movie. It's got all the glossy production values of a Meyers film like "Something's Gotta Give" or "It's Complicated": expensive clothes and expansive houses in the elegantly upscale setting of Martha's Vineyard.

If the "Fast Five" filmmakers had thrown in giant, shape-shifting robots, talking apes and some vampires, the fifth installment in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise would hardly have been more outlandish. That said, the movie will get you where you're going.

It's not just prom, it's Disney's "Prom." And so no one smokes, no one sneaks in peach schnapps in a flask and no one — that's right, no one — gets lucky in the back of a limo. This is all about that magical night when everyone gets together, regardless of the social hierarchy that had been firmly in place for the past four years, and dreams come true.

"Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil" might have had a chance if its enormously talented voice cast had written it, too. With Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Joan Cusack, Martin Short and even Wayne Newton among those lending quite good voice work to the film, it's a shame they couldn't do more to help.

"Scream," that cutlery, cleavage and quips franchise, returns to life — sort of — with "Scream 4," another sashay down self-aware "meta-movie" lane with director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson. As a "Don't open that door!" thriller that involves us, connects us with characters and frightens us, "Scream 4" fails.

It doesn't take four minutes for "Rio" to set itself apart from all the "Ice Age" movies the animators at Blue Sky made before it. Parrots, macaws, cockatoos and toucans sing and dance the samba in a flying delirium of color in a rainforest. And then the poachers show up.

It's been 36 years since Robert Redford escaped a deadly CIA plot in "Three Days of the Condor," 35 since he chased down a White House cabal in "All the President's Men." Now, as director, he's back with a drum-roll of a film about a conspiracy to kill a president and its frenzied aftermath.

Remember Saoirse Ronan, the little fibber in "Atonement" and the murder victim in "The Lovely Bones"? You don't look at her and think, "She'd make a terrific killing machine bent on revenge." Or perhaps you would. The character of the petite tough gal has been a go-to cultural touchstone for years, from TV's iconic "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to the recent green-screen-a-thon "Sucker Punch.

Few people remember this, but there were things about "Arthur" that already seemed weird and outdated in 1981. The central character was a happy drunk, but a drunk all the same, and the movie celebrated his drunkenness as some kind of exuberant life choice, when all the audience could see was a slobbering alcoholic.

The knights-errant behind the adventure comedy "Your Highness" spend more time wallowing in medieval filth than weaving clever laughs and engaging action. Reuniting key players from "Pineapple Express" — James Franco, Danny McBride, director David Gordon Green — "Your Highness" is like a Middle Ages role-playing fantasy dreamed up by the giggly stoners of that earlier comedy.

Writer-director Tom McCarthy might have started his career in film as an actor, but with his first two efforts behind the lens - "The Station Agent" and "The Visitor" - the filmmaker proved himself an adept storyteller of great sensitivity. In his latest, "Win Win," McCarthy's empathies lie with Mike Flaherty, an earnest suburban family man struggling to do his best to make ends meet.

A large-format (IMAX) nature film of the type normally seen in museums and science centers, "Born to Be Wild 3D" celebrates the efforts of two intrepid women, half a world apart, who rescue orphaned animals and return them to the wild. This is very much "a fairy tale," as Morgan Freeman narrates.

In his second feature, director Duncan Jones returns to the realm of science fiction but leaves the sterility of outer space for a more pulsating and human environment. As with his first movie, "Moon," Jones examines a character trying to make sense of a confusing, continually evolving predicament.

"Hop" has one of the cutest bunnies you'll ever see and plenty of other eye candy among its computer-generated visuals, yet there's not much bounce to the story behind this interspecies buddy comedy. Letting Russell Brand supply the voice of the Easter bunny sounds promising.

It sounds like the start of a joke: Did you know that the guys who created the hard-R "Saw" franchise - director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell - made a PG-13 movie? No, really, the guys for whom the phrase "torture porn" was coined are making a movie that doesn't rely on grated flesh.

The book is called "Jane Eyre" but when it comes to its numerous movie versions, whether it's Orson Welles in 1944 or Michael Fassbender right now, the actor playing Edward Rochester often ends up with the lion's share of the attention. That's because the brooding master of Thornfield in Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel is one of literature's archetypal romantic heroes, a complex and troubled individual who is sensitive, poetic and, as Lady Caroline Lamb famously said of Lord Byron, "mad, bad and dangerous to know.

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules" takes our intrepid wimpy hero through seventh grade - more struggles to be popular, more efforts to make his unaffected, unpretentious and childish pal Rowley less of an embarrassment. It makes more of an effort to connect the big screen "Kid" with the Jeff Kinney "Diary" books - a lot more animation.

"Revenge is for movies," protests a character in "I Saw the Devil," the most gruesome Korean vengeance flick to date. The reproach makes sense, except that the tale's protagonists - a serial killer and his pursuer - exist precisely as movie archetypes.

Matthew McConaughey slides into his role with the insinuating ease of a bottleneck over a National guitar in "The Lincoln Lawyer," a pleasantly seedy crime thriller set in the most featureless nether-regions of Los Angeles. McConaughey plays criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller, a notorious bottom-feeder whose office is the back of a Lincoln Town Car and who counts his retainers by shaking the envelopes.

The red pill or the blue pill? That question, posed in "The Matrix," is so last century. In "Limitless," a nifty, stylish little exercise in drug-fueled paranoia from director Neil Burger, it's the clear pill that raises a different question: If the apple from the tree of knowledge fell right into your lap, would you take a bite? And then what would you do? The apple in this case is an illicit designer drug, NZT, and thirtysomething slacker Eddie Mora (Bradley Cooper) — a divorced writer with a terminal case of writer's block, a guy who was just dumped by his most recent girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) because he's going nowhere at the speed of light — finds himself in possession of a stash of the stuff.

You've got to wonder which genre Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are going to tackle next. Having poked fun at zombies in 2004's "Shaun of the Dead" and the action/crime category in 2007's "Hot Fuzz," the pair are back with "Paul." The film mainly trades in simultaneously celebrating and tearing down science fiction fandom, but also dabbles in stoner comedy, buddy road movies and conspiracy theory.

It's hard to see why nature lovers would go to theaters for "The Last Lions," which, despite a solid narrative thread and impressive intimacy level with its subjects, feels little different from plenty of stuff you can watch for free at home. The documentary depicts the struggle of one lioness who, after her mate is killed, must care for her offspring while fighting for territory with a rival pride and attempting to kill one or two buffalo from a massive herd that just moved into the island in Botswana she calls home.

University of Texas graduate Catherine Hardwicke tries to transfer her panting, pretty young things "Twilight" style to "Red Riding Hood," a werewolf without the vampires fantasy aimed at that magical PG-13 audience. And for all the heaving bosoms, the big-eyed flirtation and the cool fairy-tale hair products, it doesn't work.

Sometimes charming and sometimes labored, "Mars Needs Moms" tells the story of a kid who learns to appreciate his mother only after she is abducted by space aliens. In the course of the movie's first five minutes, young Milo complains about the smallest of chores, whines about having to eat broccoli, lies to his mother, hurts her feelings and expresses excessive enthusiasm for any entertainment involving zombies.

Take "Independence Day" and "Skyline" or pretty much any aliens-invade-L.A. thriller. Strip it of Will Smith and any one-liners the heroes might snap off upon killing an alien. What you have is "Battle: Los Angeles," a straight-no-chaser war movie in which the enemy is extraterrestrial.

Whose idea was it to turn those latter-day Caribbean pirates Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy and (director) Gore Verbinski loose on a cartoon, ostensibly for kids? Because "Rango" requires some explanation. It is funny, inventive and downright daft. But who is it for, what is it and most pointedly — what is the point? Many's the movie fan who would pay to watch/hear Depp riff on "ACTING" in a twisted opening monologue.

Though it missed the vanguard of the '80s revival, the mousse-slicked, collar-popped "Take Me Home Tonight" will surely not be the last of its kind. One imagines a wave stretching for years, eventually making the copyright owners to "Come On Eileen" as rich as the guy who wrote "Happy Birthday to You.

Moviegoers familiar with the stories of Philip K. Dick (which have inspired "Blade Runner," "A Scanner Darkly" and other films) will feel a creeping unease as they watch the latest Hollywood adaptation of his work, "The Adjustment Bureau." From early on, the script brims with enough talk of soulmates, destiny and romantic coincidences to keep Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan employed the rest of their lives.

The first good movie of the new year happens to be a "tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme." "Beastly" is a high school nonmusical updating of "Beauty and the Beast. Witty, warm, well-cast and often wickedly funny, it lets Vanessa Hudgens shine and Alex Pettyfer give a hint of what all the fuss over him is about.

Call "I Am Number Four" formulaic and derivative, and odds are its creators will congratulate themselves on a job well done. The young-adult novel on which it's based was produced in a "fiction factory" run by disgraced faux-memoirist James Frey - a company intended to churn out books that become pop-culture franchises like "Twilight.

A vaguely disreputable thriller about a traveler who has lost at least some of his memory, "Unknown" invites snarky comments about star Liam Neeson, whose latest films have been revenge potboilers and lowbrow TV adaptations. Has the dignified actor, who used to headline such ambitious dramas as "Schindler's List," simply forgotten who he is? Here he plays a biotech researcher ("Doctor Martin Harris," he says frequently, placing odd emphasis on his title as if trying to pick gold-diggers in a bar) who gets separated from his wife while bound for a conference in Berlin.

Like the won't-name-them-here fashion brand whose puerile "Be Stupid" ad campaign renders criticism obsolete - if the goal is brainlessness, then any complaint translates as congratulation for a job well done - the new Adam Sandler flick "Just Go With It" acknowledges its lack of merit up front and asks consumers to play along.

Against many, many odds, the things that are wrong with "The Eagle" have almost nothing to do with its lead actor, Channing Tatum. How can this be? By every reasonable measure, Tatum should be far more of a punch line than he is. He was a model, he was an exotic dancer - from these sow's elements, silk purses are not often made.

I really regretted volunteering to review this movie. Upon reflection, a love story involving gnomes was a little too precious in a potentially Smurfy way, I thought to myself as I sat in the please-move-over-so-we-can-get-two-open-seats-together-filled-to-capacity theater.

Scooter Braun, the stubble-cheeked 29-year-old who serves officially as Justin Bieber's manager and sometimes unofficially as the baby sitter of his legions of young admirers, was having trouble getting them to behave. Standing in front of a theater packed with tween- and teenage girls in Times Square, Braun was attempting to cajole or threaten them to take their seats promptly.

Lousy by some standards but an absolute nail-biter, "Sanctum" is a pulpy thrill that reminds you how great a bad movie can be. Promoted using producer James Cameron's money-printing name, the film reflects his underwater obsessions and, naturally, employs the 3-D tech he built for "Avatar.

An earnest attempt to humanize corporate America's employment statistics, "The Company Men" boasts enough strong actors to ensure some moving scenes but can't quite flesh out the world that contains them. Its points are too obvious, and made in too obvious a way, for the film to succeed.

There is nothing easy about Mike Leigh movies. Like the real life the renowned British filmmaker tries to scrupulously emulate, his films are intriguing, dull, heartbreaking, funny, exhausting, moving and aimless - often within the same scene. Perhaps a little more existentially despairing than most of his po-faced canon, "Another Year" offers no resolution for its everyday people, no escapism from the humdrum.

Following a run of modest success with over-the-top action franchises "Crank" and "The Transporter," British tough guy Jason Statham enters the realm of remakes as hired killer Arthur Bishop in "The Mechanic." Lacking the familiarity of some other rehashes that will hit theaters this year (see: "Footloose"), "The Mechanic" was originally a 1972 Charles Bronson vehicle sandwiched in between the screen legend's more memorable turns in "The Dirty Dozen" and "Death Wish.

Thirty minutes into the exorcism thriller "The Rite," Anthony Hopkins shows up. And for this performance, playing a grizzled, whimsical Welsh exorcist plying his trade in the working-class back alleys of Rome, Sir Tony packed the prosciutto. This isn't just ham, served with a side of fava beans and a little Chianti.

`Biutiful" revels in complexity and contradiction. That's typical of a movie directed by Mexican-born Alejandro González Iñárritu, who's known for such multi-character studies as `Babel' and `Amores Perros.' In the case of `Biutiful,' however, the complexity centers on only one man - Uxbal, hauntingly played by Javier Bardem.

Like a friendlier version of "Love and Other Drugs," "No Strings Attached" introduces us to two pretty people looking for a no-emotions sexual relationship and — don't freak out here — discover that things don't often work that way. It might be the best film Ivan Reitman has made in around 20 years, but let's remember there have been a lot of "Kindergarten Cop"s since the man made "Stripes" and "Ghost Busters.

What if millionaire Bruce Wayne, instead of pretending to be an airheaded playboy obsessed with girls, partying and little else, were in fact an honest-to-Pete airheaded playboy obsessed with girls, partying and little else? What if Tonto were the brains and the brawn behind his team-up with the Lone Ranger, and the Ranger himself was an idiot who got all the headlines? Is a hero still a hero if his motivations are little more than an excuse to get out of the house and play with cool toys? These are the notions underpinning "The Green Hornet," a superhero romp brought to you by .

Since his breakout in "Swingers" and with the exception of oddball one-offs such as "Psycho" and "The Cell," Vince Vaughn spent most of his time playing VINCE VAUGHN, BABY!, a chatty, charismatic goof with a gift for physical comedy and a deadpan that balances out the swagger he tamed faster than anyone thought possible.

Although for a time "Blue Valentine" carried an NC-17 rating, the only thing utterly graphic about the film is the brutally honest depiction of the dissolution of a marriage. The film has since been given the appropriate R rating, but that does not mean children should see it.

After the gender-bending rock-and-roll fantasy "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and the sex-centric provocation "Shortbus," director John Cameron Mitchell embraces restrained realism in "Rabbit Hole," an adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer-winning play.

Gwyneth Paltrow is terrific and Tim McGraw is good in this really awful country music movie, with a clunky, unbelievable script that packs the depth and nuance of a three-minute Nashville video. To call "Country Strong" clichéd is to imply that it makes any kind of sense.

So here's the gimmick in "Season of the Witch": It takes place during the 14th century, but everyone speaks in contemporary language, which might have been acceptable if the dialogue were clever or intelligent or funny or, you know, good. Instead, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman are the knights who say … nothing of any particular note in a supernatural action thriller that's never actually thrilling.

A by-the-numbers tale of working-class backbone for an age with little respect for labor unions, "Made in Dagenham" can't match its heroine's spitfire advocacy for common-sense workplace rights. Appallingly, you can nearly read it as an anti-union film.

Despite their grand titles, enormous responsibilities and the weight of history, world leaders are just human beings at the end of the day. They are proud. They are funny. They are spouses and parents. They are flawed. It's refreshing to see a historical drama avoid grand gestures and sweeping melodrama in favor of smaller more intimate stories.

Some might argue about the necessity of remaking a classic film that garnered a beloved screen icon his only Academy Award. But if John Wayne's oversized boots are to be filled, there might be no tandem more equipped for the task than Joel and Ethan Coen.

Screen icon Robert De Niro covers the January 2011 issue of Esquire. The headline reads: "The Meaning of Life." I would be happy if the 67-year-old legend would scale back such ambitions and simply tell me the meaning of his latest movie, "Little Fockers.

It begins with a very short cartoon starring that prehistoric "Ice Age" squirrel and ends with a big song-and-dance number. But no, "Gulliver's Travels" isn't all filler. Even though it sometimes seems that way. This Jack Black vehicle plays to a few of Black's strengths — his physicality, his musicality, his eyebrows.

In "The Fighter," director David O. Russell forgets all about the postmodern kookiness of his last feature, "I Heart Huckabees," and plants his feet in a working-class Massachusetts town that has little patience for abstract theories and the college types who embrace them.

There is a problem in robotics and computer animation called "the uncanny valley," and it goes something like this: There is a point at which the attempt to make a robot or a CGI person as realistic as possible will backfire and result in revulsion in actual humans.

There's a scene in James L. Brooks' best-film-by-far, 1987's "Broadcast News," in which a TV news anchor (William Hurt) describes what it's like to have a sharp producer (Holly Hunter) whispering cues to him through his earpiece. He's ecstatic about the way she feeds him the information he needs at exactly the right moment, comparing her rhythm and intuition to great sex.

Kids will be attracted to the new 3D "Yogi Bear" like ants to a picnic. Their parents will be as entertained as having to deal with ants at a picnic. That's a big failing, because recent animated offerings - "Toy Story 3," "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Tangled" - have cleverly combined the kind of silly humor that delights youngsters with smart writing, good music and/or standout animation to keep adults amused.

Just to get the confusion out of the way: The love object in "I Love You Phillip Morris" is not America's leading tobacco company. That would be "Philip" with just one "l." Rather, this Morris is a Southern prison inmate played by a blond-dyed Ewan McGregor, and the person who loves him is a fellow convict - a con man played by Jim Carrey.

A diverting but graceless adventure that nods to Hollywood's glory years but falls far short of them, "The Tourist" bears little trace of the thrilling subtlety shown elsewhere by the artists who created it. Of its three screenwriters, Christopher McQuarrie wrote the twisty "The Usual Suspects.

"Voyage of the Dawn Treader" is either a spirited revival of the film franchise based on the C.S. Lewis children's Narnia novels or an entertaining and emotionally satisfying coda to "The Chronicles of Narnia." In the care of veteran director Michael Apted, the series' shortcomings and drifting story lines are less pronounced, and we get an idea of how the whole of Lewis' Christian allegory fantasy might have played out, a worthy challenger to the far more popular Harry Potter pictures.

From its gnarled toes and molting backs to its leering coaches and sexy doppelgangers, Darren Aronofsky's fractured fairy tale "Black Swan" is a funhouse mirror, a gloriously out-there hunk of claustrophobic, trippy balletsploitation. It's also extremely funny, which is a quality the increasingly impressive Aronofsky ("The Wrestler," "Requiem for a Dream") is not exactly known for.

An oddly positioned attempt at showgirl revivalism, "Burlesque" seems to promise something for various target audiences but falls short on most fronts. It's bad, but not a "Showgirls"-grade campfest; it offers plenty of cheesecake, but it might be too gay-friendly to titillate the Maxim crowd; its original music certainly won't win over musical lovers seeking echoes of "Chicago.

Rapunzel, the girl locked in a tower with only her long, golden locks for company, gets a sassy, spirited screen treatment from Disney with “Tangled,” an animated fairytale musical from the Not Pixar corner of the company. Disney has turned her into a missing princess — naturally — and it’s not a prince who waits below and calls out “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

Two very good-looking people play two offbeat and abrasively charming lovers in “Love & Other Drugs.” And when your screen romance is as sexual as this one, it helps if your stars are about as good looking with their clothes off as human beings get. The mismatched “Brokeback Mountain” couple Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal re-couple here — on the floor, the bed, back alleys.

While “Faster,” the new action film by Dwayne Johnson (aka “The Rock”), is both fast and furious, it should not be confused with one of the “Fast and the Furious” movies. It keeps a good “Speed,” accelerates with “Torque,” as if propelled by “Crank,” all without the benefit of being “Armored.

The main dynamic you have to accept in "The Next Three Days" - the one that the entire story, all the drama, all the risk hinge upon - is that Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks actually belong together. Always strong individually, they make no sense as a couple.

Although much of the word of mouth surrounding "127 Hours" has focused on the film's uniquely horrific sequence, director Danny Boyle's thrilling movie is more likely to leave audiences pumping their fists in exhilaration than cowering in their seats.

There are no eye-rolling pauses to stare at this new magical prop or that extra-special special effect. No time for time-killing Quidditch matches. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” is a film of actors in close-up. The lead players have grown into the roles and the who’s who of British character actors in supporting parts shine like never before, placed, as they are, in both real-world London and a selection of desolate landscapes that match the gloom of this apocalyptic tale.

"Morning Glory" is as fresh as new laundry, or Rachel McAdams, but there's something wrong with it, too, and what's wrong is in the performances.

It seems that Tony Scott didn't get enough of speeding trains and tense control rooms in last year's "The Taking of Pelham 123." For "Unstoppable," he has decided that locomotives can carry a film largely on their own, stripped of genre trappings like the John Travolta-led hijackers in "Pelham.

"Tamara Drewe" gambols along like a nice little British comedy should. Set in the charming countryside of western England, it navigates jealousies, romance and intrigue among pompous writers and assorted hangers-on with the lightest of touches. The characters include a former ugly duckling, Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), who returns to her hometown after making a name for herself as a writer - one who chronicled her transformation into a sex symbol through plastic surgery.

Last year, "District 9" drew attention for its (relatively) low-budget approach to a sci-fi arena usually left to Hollywood blockbusters. Though intriguing and often very enjoyable, the movie suffered from never deciding whether it wanted to be a faux-documentary or a standard action film.

It's dated, theatrical and over-the-top. In the 35 years since the play's premiere, it still doesn't cut black men a lot of slack. But Tyler Perry's film adaptation of Ntozoke Shange's legendary "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" bristles with passion, poetry and ambition.

What happens when you put "The Incredibles" and "Unbreakable" into a blender and press purée? Not much, as the uninspired new animated comedy "Megamind" illustrates. The movie starts out cute enough: Two aliens - one dashingly handsome and popular; the other a blue-skinned, egg-headed outcast - are dispatched to Earth by their families.

"Due Date" aims the slow burn of Robert Downey Jr. at the addled idiocy of Zach Galifianakis in a "Hangover" director's version of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." And shockingly, it's funny. Often in shocking or at least wildly inappropriate ways. The set-up - Peter, a harried businessman (Downey) dashes to the Atlanta airport so he can be home to Los Angeles in time for his wife (Michelle Monaghan) to give birth.

You could be forgiven for wondering whether "Fair Game," a gripping retelling of the Valerie Plame scandal from the perspective of Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, might not be a few years too late. Getting riled about the baldly political outing of a valuable intelligence agent looks like an exercise in futility, especially since most of the movie's villains will probably never be punished.

Troubled savant Lisbeth Salander isn't up to much in "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," the film adaptation of the final chapter in late author Stieg Larsson's trilogy. Lisbeth goes out with a whimper after the way she outsmarted enemies and went on bloody rampages in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Clint Eastwood has been involved with some odd films in his storied career (you might remember a buddy film with an orangutan) but, with the arguable exception of 'The Bridges of Madison County,' most have been rooted in the real world. So it might be a surprise to see Eastwood addressing the supernatural with 'Hereafter,' a film offering honest-to-goodness psychic phenomena and instances of the dead watching out for the living.

Jack Mabry knows rage. It's the 1960s or early '70s in the disconcerting opening scene to "Stone," and Jack is a young man (played for this brief sequence by Enver Gjokaj). But he already seems hard to the world, distant from his wife, full of an anger he cannot yet sublimate.

Hilary Swank is at her best in working-class, little-people roles, and she's found another one with "Conviction," the real-life story of Betty Anne Waters, who put herself through law school on an 18-year fight to clear her brother of a murder rap. The drama is straightforward, even a bit superficial, kind of an "Erin Brockovich" on a bad-hair day — still appealing and inspiring, still ready to take on the system, though rote and predictable here and there.

After a summer of eye-rolling films about getting the gang back together for one last big mission ("The Expendables," "The A-Team"), the star-studded "Red" seemed to hold some promise that it might kick down the door and barge in to save the day. With Bruce Willis joined by Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, rarely has a graphic novel-based movie featured so much gravitas.

Working too hard to make psychological points that might be dishonest and are definitely unsubtle, "Nowhere Boy" offers a merely enjoyable origin myth of John Lennon - one whose familial melodrama justifies the movie's existence without quite illuminating its subject's more mysterious aspects.

Woody Allen is getting meaner in his old age. With his latest, "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," he creates a cast of characters who deliberately hurt each other, and no one ends up likable. They all approach personal relationships like most people view cars: When the old one gets a bit worn, you trade it in for a newer model.

Uneven and sloppily sentimental, "Life as We Know It" is still the best Katherine Heigl comedy since "Knocked Up." Credit her co-star, Josh Duhamel, for that. As he has done in many a less-worthy romantic comedy, he amplifies her charm. And she, in turn, brings out his sweet side.

"Secretariat" opens with the voice of God talking to Job about a fearless war-horse. It's powerful Old Testament poetry. Who knew the Almighty was a racing fan? The Sport of Kings is a mixed feedbag. And so is Disney's feel-good family film about the racehorse a sportswriter said "had muscles in his eyebrows.

Ever since the marketing began for the new movie `Buried,' people wondered how a filmmaker could stretch out the conceit of a man trapped inside a box for 90-plus minutes. One man in a box would get terribly boring. Surely, that couldn't be all there is.

Mentally ill people don't fare well in movies. They're threats or objects of ridicule, caricatures or puzzles to be unlocked magically. If you've ever cared about someone whose emotional problems got bad enough to require inpatient care, the idea of a Hollywood teen comedy/romance set in a psychiatric ward might rightly fill you with dread.

"Never Let Me Go," the dystopian tale from director Mark Romanek, has to be one of the most somber, depressing movies ever made. It's also difficult to discuss. Should you reveal the central premise, which is delicately withheld from full explanation for about the first third of the 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro but bluntly stated by a "guardian," played by Sally Hawkins, in the first 30 minutes of the movie? For those who appreciate the novel's elusiveness, the answer has to be "no.

In the Harvard University conjured up in the film `The Social Network,' the campus that spawned Facebook is populated by overstuffed brains. To the score of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, it audibly throbs with possibility. The most restless brain of all belongs to Mark Zuckerberg, a 19-year-old whose motor mouth, cynicism, programming skills and obsessive desire to be included in the school's prestigious Final Clubs lead him to bring the world together through online social networking.

It might seem odd that a movie that appeared on multiple Top 10 lists just two years ago already would be primed for a remake. But, despite the critical and cult success of director Tomas Alfredson's Swedish vampire thriller "Let the Right One In" — based on John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel of the same name — the simple fact of the matter is that, relative to its quality, few people saw the incredible movie that first had Austin audiences buzzing at Fantastic Fest 2008.

Davis Guggenheim is shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater again. Last time, his Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," made clear the deadly effects of global warming on our spaceship Earth. But his latest, the powerful, enthralling "Waiting for `Superman,'" strikes even closer to home.

There isn't much action in the first half of "Catfish," which is being billed as a documentary by directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost. The camera focuses firmly on Ariel's brother, Nev Schulman, a New York-based dance photographer, as he spends his days in the same way that many of us do, on the computer.

In his first film as a director, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman stays with what he knows. "Jack Goes Boating" is a play he has already performed (with his longtime theater company LAByrinth). It is cast with actors close to him, like his LAByrinth partner John Ortiz.

A motley jumble of mini-documentaries that doesn't add up to a full cinematic meal, "Freakonomics" offers morsels worth pondering but looks most of all like an attempt to spin the surprisingly popular book into a TV series to match the New York Times Magazine column the authors already write.

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is what they used to call an A-picture: A movie star at the head, nice clothing, wide angles cut with meaningful close-ups, big speeches about How We Live Now. It's a large, floppy animal of a movie, or maybe a very earnest herd of them.

A muddled face-the-past comedy that changes course every few minutes, "You Again" stretches hard to justify its premise and then can't decide what to do with it. There's only one screenwriter credited (first-timer Moe Jelline), but the script feels like the product of three or four authors who can't agree on A: the lessons to be learned from high-school bullying and its real-world aftermath, and B: whether they care about teaching lessons at all.

A scrappy youngster finds that believing in himself prepares him to save the world in "Legend of the Guardians," a movie that plays exactly like a half-dozen other fantasy films - except that the heroes and villains are all owls. Adapted from a series of illustrated kids' books, the movie's main selling point is its lush computer-animated rendering of a winged cast of characters and the golden-hued world they live in.

It takes nerve to remake a movie like the Coen brothers' "Blood Simple," in which success with audiences came down not to plot (its elements are as stale as flop sweat) but to an ineffable mix of tones, from bone-dry terror to black comedy. But Zhang Yimou ("Hero," "To Live"), who has come to be something of an official state artist in his native China, doesn't lack for ambition and seems to think highly of his own ability to throw disparate vibes into the same pot and make the broth worth slurping.

Does the tank make the soldier? In "Lebanon," the decrepit, lumbering, battle-tested war machine in which director Samuel Maoz traps us has been to hell and back. The same cannot be said for the young, scared Israeli conscripts manning the tank codenamed "Rhino.

In his 38 years, Ben Affleck - director and star of "The Town" - has worn more entertainment-industry hats than most people know. He was a child actor ("Voyage of the Mimi," we'll never forget you). He was hysterical as the bully O'Bannion in "Dazed and Confused," one of the best-cast movies of the past few decades.

A quick-witted teen comedy that revolves around sex (or at least the idea of it) without being nearly as raunchy as its multiplex peers, "Easy A" relies on the ample charisma of Emma Stone, an actress who has brought spark to films both great ("Superbad") and not-so ("The Rocker").

It's nothing short of amazing to think how far even animation's B-pictures have come in just a few short years. Compare "Alpha and Omega," a new 3-D 'toon from Crest Animation (and Lionsgate), to "Hoodwinked" or "Fly Me to the Moon" - cut-rate pictures from just a couple of years ago.

First, one should give credit where credit is due. With "I'm Still Here," actor Joaquin Phoenix and director Casey Affleck (Phoenix's brother-in-law) have hit upon a possibly singular formula: They've made a movie vaguely brave, old-school exploitative and completely inane.

With its rom-com quirk and indie-rock sincerity, "Going the Distance" starts off at risk of being a little too cute to tolerate. The tale of a blossoming boy-meets-girl interrupted by girl-moves-cross-country seems to see this danger coming, and tries to head it off by playing with the genre's clichés.

If you take immigration politics, religion or the sanctity of fictional human life too seriously, you will probably want to stay away from "Machete." But if you like over-the-top action, blood by the bucketful, unapologetic B-movie homage and satirization of sensitive and nuanced political issues, Robert Rodriguez's latest film will leave your head spinning with grindhouse glee.

Dancer Li Cunxin has a naturally compelling story. And though veteran Australian director Bruce Beresford ("Breaker Morant" and "Driving Miss Daisy") does his best to tug at the heartstrings through some clichéd and manipulative storytelling, the basics of Li's journey from rural China to the international ballet stage still reward.

"The American" is sufficiently out-of-step with today's cinema that you almost can hear its distributors holding their breath, hoping George Clooney's action pose on the poster will lure viewers in before they know what they're getting. What they're getting is an existential crime movie with violence, chase scenes, sex and exotic locales, yes - but also one offering long stretches of silence, a leading man who has intentionally turned the lights out on his charm and a worldview that starts off bleak and sticks to its guns.

A glossy cops-and-robbers flick cast with hip names, some musicians and a couple of B-listers who might as well be labeled nonactors themselves, "Takers" would like to be "Heat" for the Top 40 crowd but won't satisfy many others. Almost superficial enough to coast with until the popcorn runs out, it suffers from an overblown finale that tries about five times too hard and makes viewers regret having forgiven the many sins that preceded it.

"The Last Exorcism" keeps you guessing. At first, it seems to be a documentary that blurs the lines, partly reminiscent of 1972's Oscar-winning documentary feature "Marjoe," which featured a tent evangelist revealing the secrets of his fraudulent ministry.

Like Boo Radley, the first character he played on the big screen, Robert Duvall's Felix Bush is a small-town specter believed to have done very bad things. And he probably has. The mean old cuss at the heart of "Get Low" wears his hair and beard caveman-long, it seems, in part to hide from a civilized world he doesn't feel he deserves to re-enter.

"Lottery Ticket" isn't the mega ball of outrageous comedy, but it's still a winner because of the way director Erik White blends comic lunacy with sweet sentimentality. Kevin (Bow Wow), a young man living with his grandmother, is suddenly $370 million richer when he wins a nationwide lottery.

It's hard to believe that "The Switch," the new romantic comedy from directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck, is based on a short story by Jeffrey Eugenides, who wrote the novel on which "The Virgin Suicides" was based. "The Switch" is a polished, sentimental outing in the same vein as any number of romantic comedies, but nothing could be further from Sofia Coppola's super-stylized "Suicides," a morbid story of suburban oppression.

The Nanny McPhee movies might be principally for kids, but make no mistake about it: They are, quite literally, a parent's dream. Overwhelmed single parents with unruly kids are rescued by a magical nanny who seemingly appears out of nowhere. And at no cost! For some older moviegoers escorting little ones, this premise might be impossibly alluring.

Are there times when it is better to forget than forgive? That is the question central to the lives of the characters in "Life During Wartime," the latest from director Todd Solondz. When it comes to remembering Solondz's 1998 film "Happiness," which shocks and ewws with tales of sexual deviancy, squeamish movie-goers might feel the answer to this question is yes.

Twenty years after playing the quintessential prostitute with a heart of gold, Julia Roberts is back playing a pretty woman in distress. Make no mistake: Like the 1990 hit that turned Roberts into one of Hollywood's biggest stars, there's a knight in shining armor at the end of "Eat Pray Love," a movie based on Elizabeth Gilbert's 2006 best-selling memoir, but in this film, Roberts' character saves herself.

Take this as either a) a reason to question the review that follows, or b) evidence that Internet crowd-sourcing isn't going to make professional critics obsolete for a while yet. As I type these lines, Sylvester Stallone's ode to schlock (or is that "eau d'schlock"?) "The Expendables" has an IMDb user rating of 9.

The cast of "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" represents the best young talent coming up in Hollywood today. So far, they haven't earned any monikers like the Brat Pack (Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez) or the Frat Pack (the Wilson brothers, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell).

An unscientific study has confirmed that, the publicity around its recently published sequel notwithstanding, moviegoers of a certain age have never heard of "Less Than Zero." It is for those kids that "Twelve" was made. Everyone else will likely view this new Joel Schumacher film as "Zero" with less charisma - a Very Special Episode of "Gossip Girl" in which repugnant rich kids do idiotic things with their lives.

"Step Up 3D" is, in one significant respect, a step up. That is, in contrast to the recent spate of post-production 3-D conversions (see "The Last Airbender," see "Clash of the Titans"), this one actually looks good. Conceived and shot as a 3-D dance spectacle, with specialized cameras and technology, the film has dancers spinning and bobbing, popping and locking, jumping off of the screen.

Will Ferrell movies aren't known for their restraint, but the silly new "The Other Guys" takes the "throw every idea we have in somewhere" tactic to new territory. It's probably the first Hollywood action comedy to have the final credits accompanied by an infographic sequence worthy of the next high-profile documentary.

One thing kidnapping movies have taught us is that if you try to steal someone for money, it's a pretty safe bet that things aren't going to go as planned. There are so many different ways things can go wrong, in fact, that one has to wonder why anyone even gets into that line of work.

Dogs and cats, living together … mass hysteria? Maybe not so much. Though these animals were resourceful and well-equipped enemies in the original "Cats & Dogs" from 2001, now they're forced to band together to fight a common foe in the sequel "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.

Many people probably are wondering: Does "Dinner for Schmucks" have enough yuks? The answer is a qualified yes. Steve Carell plays Barry, a lonely IRS worker who has an unusual hobby: taking dead mice and giving them new life as dressed-up characters in his homemade dioramas.

"Charlie St. Cloud" is the weirdest movie of 2010. By far. "Inception?" Please. By comparison, "Inception" is a model of narrative clarity and thematic focus. It is "Toy Story 3" compared with the emotional fogbank that is "Charlie St. Cloud." Part tearjerker, part "Sixth Sense," part weak attempt to pass off Vancouver as the Massachusetts coast, "Charlie St.

You know those radiation-detection devices that are supposed to keep our homeland secure by scanning cargo for nuclear weapons at shipping ports? Turns out they're about as smart as that Transportation Security Administration rule that makes you throw out your 5-ounce shampoo while the mommy behind you brings baby formula onboard without notice.

If last year's "Bright Star" was the best depiction in years of high art's ability to both convey and inspire deeply felt emotion, "Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky" is here to remind us of art's more carnal powers - to prove how hot cool modernism can be.

Much is being made of the fact that the action hero of "Salt" is, in fact, an action heroine - Angelina Jolie, whose interest in this screenplay inspired producers to change its main character from male to female just for her. But whatever the merits of the story and its thrills, this gender reversal isn't going to look startlingly original to anyone who has seen shoot-'em-ups starring Sigourney Weaver, Charlize Theron or - hey, wait - Jolie herself.

It's so sentimental and sweet that you can almost forgive the kids' comedy "Ramona and Beezus" for not being nearly funny enough. This adaptation of Beverly Cleary's 1950s novels about "Ramona the Pest" and her sister Beatrice (Beezus, to her) emphasizes childhood conflicts, confusion and emotions over slapstick - no great sin.

(Editor's note: This review first ran in March 2009 during the South by Southwest Film Festival.) "Troll 2" — it's as bad as it sounds. The 1989 straight-to-VHS creature feature is a blundering fiesta of rubber masks and arthritic acting, the "Citizen Lame" of no-budget goblin pictures.

Director Christopher Nolan has been messing with our minds, our memories and our dreams ever since he put himself on the moviemaking map with 2000's "Memento." Nolan's latest mind-blower, "Inception," goes way beyond "Memento" and sets a new standard for big-screen imagination.

What an appropriate title writer-director Lisa Cholodenko chose for her family comic drama "The Kids Are All Right." The two kids of the film — teen siblings getting to know their biological dad — are great — smart, mature, high-minded, well-adjusted.

Empty-calorie family fun once again whips a feature-length story up out of little more than a Disney-owned brand. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" doesn't achieve the level of the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" but is a whole lot livelier than some of this season's other fantasy/actioners.

In "Predators," Adrien Brody speaks in a low, tough-guy grumble that film action heroes have increasingly adapted to transmit portentous bravado and rugged reserve. Think Christian Bale in "The Dark Knight" - a guttural, irritated rasp that holds steady, never jumping a register, even in the most high-voltage situations.

Portly people on pencil-thin legs are funny. So are unintelligible but sentient Twinkie-colored tater tots. "Despicable Me," the wonderful, new animated film from Universal, uses both to great comic effect. The portly person in "Despicable" is Gru, a past-his-prime super villain nimbly voiced by Steve Carell.

"The Girl Who Played With Fire" feels like a hasty knockoff compared to the adaptation of the first book in Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson's best-selling trilogy, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." The story falls back heavily on action from the far-superior first film, and the secrets revealed about its heroine's dark and violent past are not exactly earthshaking.

"Winter's Bone" seems simple. Ree Dolly, 17, goes to the homes of her Ozarks neighbors, asking about her father's whereabouts. The father has used the family's home and timberland to pay bond to get out of jail, but he has disappeared. And if Ree doesn't find out what happened to him, she will be kicked off the land and become homeless, along with her mentally ill mother and her younger brother and sister.

"Cyrus," a dramatic romance splotched with awkward comedy, is surely the best movie by filmmaking brothers (and former Austinites) Jay and Mark Duplass. Their previous features, the satisfying dramedy "The Puffy Chair" and the shambling misfire "Baghead," were scruffy little movies that, with their jittery camera work and improvy vibe, earned the now-familiar label mumblecore.

So intense in its depiction of modern-day aristocracy that it becomes something of a luxury product itself, "I Am Love" reeks of privilege and wealth. Moviegoers with an ounce of class-consciousness might struggle with it, wondering whether characters who have everything else in the world really need our sympathy as well.

“The Last Airbender” is a joyless, soulless, muddled mess, but the worst part of all doesn’t come until the very end. That’s when it makes the clear suggestion that two more such movies are in store for us. Hopefully, that won’t happen. Based on the Nickelodeon animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” this live-action fantasy adventure has epic scope and soaring ambitions, exotic locations and a cast of thousands, but manages to get everything wrong on every level.

God bless anyone unlucky enough to be one of Adam Sandler's friends. The actor can be endearing onscreen. When the stars align, he's even brilliant. But if the Sandler-cowritten screenplay for "Grown Ups" offers a peek into his ideal of male camaraderie (and the presence of longtime Sandler cohorts suggests it does), then the comedian's posse is a nasty, witless clique closely resembling the junior-high locker rooms most adolescents can't wait to escape.

Joan Rivers will not abide two things: going without makeup and a blank calendar. The documentary "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" opens with an extremely tight shot of Rivers at the mirror spackling her face with copious amounts of foundation, the perpetual entertainer applying the cosmetic mask that helps to veil her from the world.

Continuing the loosening-up agenda he embarked on in "Tropic Thunder," Tom Cruise lightly spoofs his "Mission Impossible" persona in "Knight and Day," an action romance that more or less openly admits its pleasures are best enjoyed by those willing to turn their brains off for a bit.

This is what happens when you’re good at your job: Everyone expects excellence from you, and anything even slightly short of that feels like a letdown. “Toy Story 3” is a gorgeous film — funny, sweet and clever in the tradition of the best Pixar movies — but because it comes from that studio’s nearly flawless tradition, including two “Toy Story” predecessors, the expectations naturally are inflated.