Steve Carell & Paul Rudd

Dinner for Schmucks
Steve Carell & Paul Rudd in Dinner for Schmucks

This remake of a French farce has a lot of funny people going for it. In it, a wealthy businessman hosts a monthly soiree for which his employees must bring an idiot to dinner, and the best idiot wins. Tim (Paul Rudd) feels conflicted about this, but into his life (and off the front of his car) bounces a pluperfect dolt, played by Steve Carell.

 

Zac Efron

Charlie Saint Cloud
Zac Efron & Amanda Crew in Charlie Saint Cloud

This is the tale of a college-bound sailing phenom, Charlie (Zac Efron), whose brother, Sam, 11, is killed by a drunk driver. Charlie's life derails; he cancels plans to attend Stanford and becomes a hermit groundskeeper at the cemetery where Sam is buried. Supernatural things happen there, like Sam showing up with his baseball glove and ball in hand

 

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Bette Midler & Christina Applegate in Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

'Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore' is the latest movie to be unnecessarily converted to 3-D, which means that if mom and dad want to take the kids to see the fur fly this weekend, they're going to pay a surcharge to receive absolutely nothing of value in return. This sequel is better than the original, but so is a rabies shot

 

Guillaume Canet & Emir Kusturica

Farewell (L'Affaire Farewell)
Guillaume Canet & Emir Kusturica in Farewell

The fact-based spy movie 'Farewell' ('L'Affaire Farewell') from French director Christian Carion boasts the considerable virtue of seeming to take place in the real world, among genuine (if duplicitous) practitioners of the surveillance and secrets game in the late Cold War era of the early 1980s. This is fascinating material based on Soviet intelligence agent Vladimir Vetrov

 

Angelina Jolie

Salt
Angelina Jolie & Liev Schreiber in Salt

Director Phillip Noyce's run-like-hell thriller 'Salt' starring Angelina Jolie satisfies a basic human taste. Angleina Jolie plays a supertough superspook confronted one day with a Russian defector who accuses her of being a sleeper agent in the employ of Russians dreaming of old-school world domination

 

Selena Gomez & Joey King

Ramona and Beezus
Joey King & Selena Gomez in Ramona and Beezus

If 'Ramona and Beezus' does find an audience, its success can be framed as brand loyalty to author Beverly Cleary's children's books. As Ramona, Joey King establishes plausible push-pull chemistry with Selena Gomez's Beezus, whose popularity and hair-care preoccupations contrast with her little sister's roughhousing

 

Leonardo DiCaprio

Inception
Leonardo DiCaprio & Ken Watanabe in Inception

This elegant brain-bender affirms the prodigious imagination and clout of writer-director Christopher Nolan. Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Dom Cobb, works as an 'extraction' expert, able to enter someone's subconscious and purloin valuable information for a fee. The plot, I suspect, will not matter much to people interested in diving into Nolan's rich, sleek series of collapsing surfaces

 

Nicolas Cage & Jay Baruchel

The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Nicolas Cage & Jay Baruchel in The Sorcerer's Apprentice

In 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' Nicolas Cage plays Balthazar, a good sorcerer who can live forever and is trying to protect modern-day New York City and environs from the ravages of bad sorcerers played by Alfred Molina and Alice Krige. Once Balthazar presses young Dave (Jay Baruchel) into apprenticeship, the duo and Molina shoot fire-jets and balls of energy at one another's heads

 

Benjamin Bratt

La Mission
Benjamin Bratt & Jeremy Ray Valdez in La Mission

'La Mission' is a prime example of the struggles an American indie must wage. It also happens to be a satisfying and movingly acted story. Shot two years ago by writer-director Peter Bratt, the film stars Bratt's brother, Benjamin, as Che Rivera, a Bay Area bus driver who's an ex-con, a recovering alcoholic, a longtime widower and a low rider fanatic

 

Annette Bening & Julianne Moore

The Kids Are All Right
Annette Bening & Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right

Doctor Nic (Annette Bening) and her longtime partner, Jules (Julianne Moore), have two teenagers from the same sperm donor. When the kids make contact with the donor behind the moms' backs, Mark Ruffalo's easygoing restaurateur Paul shows up to stir this family's pot a bit. Bening and Moore have never been looser on screen, and Ruffalo is the perfect foil

 

Despicable Me

Despicable Me
Steve Carell & Jason Segel in Despicable Me

An agreeable jumble, the animated feature 'Despicable Me' sells its 3-D in ways you wouldn't call sophisticated or witty. With a heavy Slavic dialect, Steve Carell voices the 'Me' of the title, a sallow-complexioned baddie named Gru, who plans to steal the moon by way of a 'shrink ray.' Along the way he grapples with his mother (Julie Andrews) and his nemesis, Vector (Jason Segel)

 

Adrien Brody & Laurence Fishburne

Predators
Adrien Brody & Laurence Fishburne in Predators

For a while, Predators is a worthy successor, opening with a motley multinational crew of thugs dropping from the sky, having free-fallen from places unknown -- Adrien Brody's growling mercenary; Topher Grace's befuddled physician; Laurence Fishburne's wily survivalist -- an impressive cast worth having in your killer-monster movie any day

 

Noomi Rapace & Michael Nyqvist

The Girl Who Played With Fire
Noomi Rapace & Michael Nyqvist in The Girl Who Played With Fire

'The Girl Who Played With Fire' follows the global commercial success of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' ($100 million in gross receipts, a healthy $8.8 million of which came from its recent U.S. run) and will be followed this fall by the American release of the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy's final installment, 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest'

 

Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson

Twilight: Eclipse
Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson in Twilight: Eclipse

'Eclipse' finds Bella (Kristen Stewart) inching closer to her decision to marry Edward (Robert Pattinson) and become a vampire, thus breaking the werewolf heart of Jacob (Taylor Lautner). The wolves and the vamps must unite to take on an army of vampiric 'newborns.'

 

Noah Ringer

The Last Airbender
Noah Ringer & Dev Patel in The Last Airbender

'The Last Airbender' tells the first part of the previously animated TV series' story, in which the world's kingdoms are built around fire, air, water and earth. Some Water Nation war orphans discover, frozen in ice, young Aang (Noah Ringer), the reincarnation of the Avatar, who can control the elements and restore harmony.

 

Joe Pesci & Helen Mirren

Love Ranch
Helen Mirren & Joe Pesci in Love Ranch

Dame Helen Mirren as a tough-talking Nevada brothel madam? We like to think our finest screen performers can play anyone. Mirren, whose career has encompassed the full spectrum of human behavior, from queens to gangster's molls, is fully capable of tackling a character like the one in Love Ranch, co-starring Joe Pesci as her husband and partner in legalized flesh-peddling

 

Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei & John C. Reilly

Cyrus
John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei & Catherine Keener in Cyrus

"Cyrus" amuses and unnerves in equal measure. A comedy of discomfort that walks a wonderful line between reality-based emotional honesty and engaging humor, it demonstrates the good things that happen when quirky independent style combines with top-of-the-line acting skill.

 

Grown Ups

Grown Ups
Adam Sandler & Kevin James in Grown Ups

"Grown Ups" is a sure thing -- a film you feel as if you've seen before, and probably saw somewhere a second time, so why not another? When Adam Sandler's beloved middle-school basketball coach dies, the Hollywood agent and his far-flung pals (a comedy who's who of Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade and Rob Schneider) reunite for the funeral back in New England.

 

Casey Affleck & Kate Hudson

The Killer Inside Me
Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson & Jessica Alba in Cyrus

The Killer Inside Me -- an adaptation of the memorably rancid 1952 Jim Thompson novel -- features, among other things, a notorious scene between Casey Affleck, who plays the deputy sheriff of a West Texas town, and Jessica Alba, his fellow sadomasochist and prostitute lover, who's a tramp like all the other women in his twisted life

 

Tom Cruise & Cameron Diaz

Knight and Day
Tom Cruise & Cameron Diaz in Knight and Day

An outsize comedy thriller, 'Knight and Day' stars Tom Cruise in his first summer action vehicle since 'Mission: Impossible III' and Cameron Diaz as the one perpetually getting drugged and whisked away. Director James Mangold and a couple of movie stars can go only so far on fumes

 

Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3
Tom Hanks & Tim Allen in Toy Story 3

'Toy Story 3' is a good sequel. Young Andy is heading off to college, and the long-neglected toys are headed for the attic. After mistakenly getting thrown to the curb as trash, the gang -- cowboy Woody, spaceman Buzz Lightyear, cowgirl Jessie, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and the rest of the principals -- has to bust out of the day care center in which they find themselves

 

Josh Brolin & Megan Fox

Jonah Hex
Josh Brolin, John Malkovich & Megan Fox in Jonah Hex

'Jonah Hex' is the latest DC Comics title to reach the screen. The film's scenario sticks to 1876, focusing on Jonah's (Josh Brolin's) quest to kill the insane yet rather dull terrorist played by Malkovich, because he's the one who burned his family alive and then branded Jonah with a terrible branding iron. But here's how you know Josh Brolin has become a movie star

 

Colin Farrell & Alicja Bachleda

Ondine
Colin Farrell & Alicja Bachleda in Ondine

'Ondine' stars Colin Farrell as Syracuse, a local fisherman with a heavy-drinking ex-wife and a spirited daughter on dialysis. Syracuse is long past having dreams when he snares a beautiful woman in his nets, and reality and Irish mythology soon tangle in ways both magical and frustrating. Nevertheless, there is much to recommend

 

Rachel Weisz & Max Minghella

Agora
Rachel Weisz & Max Minghella in Agora

Set in the 4th century in Roman-controlled Alexandria, 'Agora' has everything except real drama. While Christian unrest swirls around Rachel Weisz, who plays a 'pagan' astronomer -- a sexy librarian, without the specs -- she must contend with two disparate suitors.

 

Joan Rivers & Melissa Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Joan Rivers & Melissa Joan Rivers in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work takes the audience on a year long ride with legendary comedian Joan Rivers. Peeling away the mask of an iconic comedian and exposing the struggles, sacrifices and joy of living life as a ground breaking female performer. The film is an emotionally surprising and revealing portrait of one the most hilarious and long-standing career women ever in the business

 

Jean Dujardin & Louise Monot

OSS 117: Lost in Rio
Jean Dujardin & Louise Monot in OSS 117: Lost in Rio

France's super secret agent man is back in 'OSS 117: Lost in Rio,' and he's better, and worse, than ever. The latest edition of the French spoof again stars Jean Dujardin as Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, a secret agent with brilliantined hair and a specialty for sailing through politically incorrect pronouncements with the same aplomb he does shootouts with bad guys

 

Jennifer Lawrence & John Hawkes

Winter's Bone
Jennifer Lawrence & John Hawkes in Winter's Bone

Adapted from Daniel Woodrell's novel, Winter's Bone takes place in the Missouri Ozarks. Here, when someone's cooking skills are mentioned, the phrase refers to a methamphetamine lab, not dinner. The land and its socioeconomics are not for the weak. And in 17-year-old Ree, a flinty survivor portrayed by the spectacularly talented young actress Jennifer Lawrence

 

Jaden Smith & Jackie Chan

The Karate Kid
Jaden Smith & Jackie Chan in The Karate Kid

The new version of 'The Karate Kid' was shot on location in China. The old material has been successfully reworked to showcase Jaden Smith (Dre), a cool, unflappably stoic young performer. With Jackie Chan co-starring in 'Pat' Morita's old role, this reprise stays true to the original with its training montages and storytelling basics

 

Liam Neeson & Bradley Cooper

The A-Team
Liam Neeson & Bradley Cooper in The A-Team

This film is a perpetually frenetic and (surprise!) frequently entertaining time-killer. With Liam Neeson (Hannibal) at the helm, this bombastic bunch gets re-imagined as Special Forces ops working in Baghdad during the troop draw-down. Directed for maximum visual fragmentation in the action sequences by Joe Carnahan, the movie ultimately gits 'er done

 

Michael Douglas & Susan Sarandon

Solitary Man
Michael Douglas & Susan Sarandon in Solitary Man

A modest but juicy character study of a horn dog in winter, Solitary Man stars Michael Douglas as the self-destructive hedonist, slouching toward redemption. Douglas plays Ben Kalmen, who to his old Boston college, where the daughter (Imogen Poots) of his lover (Mary-Louise Parker) is thinking of studying. It's not hard to see where this quasi-incestuous road trip is headed

 

Jonah Hill & Russell Brand

Get Him to the Greek
Jonah Hill & Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek

Extremely raunchy, this film is also very funny. Written and directed by director Nicholas Stoller, 'Get Him to the Greek' follows Aaron (Jonah Hill), a record-company gofer charged with flying to London to fetch a substance-infested rock star on the wane, played by Russell Brand, for a comeback concert at LA's Greek Theatre

 

Adrien Brody & Sarah Polley

Splice
Adrien Brody & Sarah Polley in Splice

This crafty new thriller features Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as genetic engineers who successfully create a new hybrid creature out of DNA from various species. Naturally, the experiments go too far, creating 'Dren,' a thing that's part human, but with various other horror genre features like a tail with a deadly stinger and legs like a dinosaur

 

Ashton Kutcher & Katherine Heigl

The Killers
Ashton Kutcher & Katherine Heigl in The Killers

In 'Killers' Kutcher plays a CIA superspy assassin who wants out, for the sake of his relationship with a Type A control-freakish ninny played by Katherine Heigl. 'Killers,' which I saw with a restful, smallish crowd late Friday morning, brings up a lot of intriguing questions

 

Owen Wilson & Emma Stone

Marmaduke
Owen Wilson & Emma Stone in Marmaduke

'Marmaduke,' the comic strip about life with a 200-pound Great Dane, earns a dull but harmless big-screen comedy aimed at the youngest moviegoers. Voiced by Owen Wilson, this canine narrates and chats up his fellow members of the House-pet Kingdom thanks to digital assistance, moving from Kansas to Southern California with his family

 

Jesse Eisenberg & Justin Bartha

Holy Rollers
Jesse Eisenberg & Justin Bartha in Holy Rollers

Given its intriguing premise and inherently meaty conflicts, the glibly titled crime drama 'Holy Rollers' never quite catches fire, calling for more edge and narrative tension than director Kevin Asch and screenwriter Antonio Macia manage to deliver. Still, it's an often evocative dip into unique territory fleshed out by a highly convincing cast

 

Dany Boon & Yolande Moreau

Micmacs
Dany Boon & Yolande Moreau in Micmacs

Looming, impish eyes; gliding cameras; whimsy aggressive enough to make you swear off whimsy for a month: It is time once again for a film from the French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, best known on these shores for 'Amelie.' The director's latest is 'Micmacs.' The story hinges on a homeless former video store clerk with a bullet lodged in his brain after a near-fatal shooting

 

Sex and the City 2

Sex and the City 2
Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon

While Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) are off to Abu Dhabi for more fashion, flings and Cosmopolitans, this franchise's pre-sold fan base might respond to this second installment with, 'Oh ... You four again.'

 

Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Jake Gyllenhaal & Gemma Arterton

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of movies based on video games. This film, which is moderately entertaining chaos, follows Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), a street urchin adopted by the king, as he battles to keep a magical, time-shifting dagger out of enemy hands

 

Q'orianka Kilcher

Princess Kaiulani
Q'orianka Kilcher & Shaun Evans in Princess Kaiulani

The true story of how Hawaii lost its sovereignty and became annexed to the United States might have been an interesting one, but it makes for starchy entertainment in the historical drama 'Princess Kaiulani.'

 

Kristen Wiig and Will Forte in MacGruber

MacGruber
Kristen Wiig & Will Forte in MacGruber

'MacGruber' summons up memories of mullets, 'MacGyver' and Mike Myers. A blood-spattered, hit-or-miss character comedy of the 'Wayne's World'/'Austin Powers' school, it manages to be nostalgic and profane in equal measures, retro and yet retrofitted to suit the new cutting edge in screen farce

 

Mother and Child

Mother and Child
Annette Bening & Naomi Watts in Mother and Child

Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia's new film interlaces three L.A. stories. Annette Bening plays a physical therapist who long ago gave up a daughter in a closed-adoption scenario. That baby has grown up to be a fearsome attorney (Naomi Watts), who's hired by a senior law-firm partner (Samuel L. Jackson) and is sleeping with him

 

Shrek Forever After

Shrek Forever After
Mike Myers & Cameron Diaz in Shrek Forever After

Dreamworks seems bored with the ogre who laid the golden egg. Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the lucrative franchise, barely tampers with the Shrek formula (one-liners, flatulence jokes, pop tunes) and not enough to breathe life into the exhausted series. Shrek, feeling buried under the celebrity and the diapers, makes an unwise trade with a wizard named Rumpelstiltskin

 

Eric Cantona

Looking for Eric
Steve Evets & John Henshaw in Looking for Eric

The Eric of the title is Eric Cantona, the Manchester United legend who retired from soccer in 1997 to paint, play music, study philosophy and dabble in film. He plays himself in director Ken Loach's inspirational fairy tale, written by Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty

 

Russell Crowe & Cate Blanchett

Robin Hood
Russell Crowe & Cate Blanchett in Robin Hood

Ridley Scott's updated prequel to the outlaw legend brings intensity to Sherwood Forest, reestablishing Russell Crowe's Robin and Cate Blanchett's Lady Marion as the linchpins to key Middle Ages historical events. Audiences had better keep up with the frenetic battle sequences, because when Scott storms a castle, he wants you to feel the danger and the thwwwunnnch of the arrow entering flesh

 

Amanda Seyfried & Vanessa Redgrave

Letters to Juliet
Amanda Seyfried & Vanessa Redgrave in Letters to Juliet

Amanda Seyfried stars in this enjoyable romantic comedy as Sophie, a bright-eyed girl on vacation with her single-minded fiance in Verona, Italy. Here, centuries ago, Romeo met Juliet. Today lovelorn letters to the tragic heroine are left at a sacred spot. When Sophie replies to a letter written fifty years earlier, its author Claire, a remarkable Vanessa Redgrave, returns to Verona

 

Queen Latifah & Common

Just Wright
Queen Latifah & Common in Just Wright

Audiences may be stunned by the genuine display of niceness in this romantic comedy. Queen Latifah plays a physical therapist who has two months to rehab the man she secretly loves, the nicest guy the NBA, played by Common, after a knee injury threatens to derail his career.

 

Directed by Alex Gibney

Casino Jack and the United States of Money
Directed by Alex Gibney

Casino Jack and the United States of Money is a film that's always on the move, a smart, lively, thoroughly involving doc about a complex, critical subject. Alex Gibney is as good as it gets at making complicated political material come alive on screen

 

Robert Downey Jr. & Gwyneth Paltrow

Iron Man 2
Robert Downey Jr. & Gwyneth Paltrow in Iron Man 2

'A passable knock-off': That's how the obscenely rich but heartsick industrialist played by Robert Downey Jr. characterizes the electro-weaponry wielded by his adversary (Mickey Rourke) in 'Iron Man 2.'

 

Catherine Keener & Oliver Platt

Please Give
Catherine Keener & Oliver Platt in Please Give

With her poignant, funny new film, writer-director Nicole Holofcener is at the top of her game. Catherine Keener plays a woman whose roles as wife, mother, businesswoman and neighbor play out against the background of her self-recriminating sense that a person in her privileged position ought to be doing more to make the world a better place

 

Babies

Babies
Ponijao & Bayarjargal in Babies

If the French-made, globally minded study in adorableness known as 'Babies' keeps a few Westernized parents from overscheduling, micromanaging, helicoptering and snowplowing their way through their neurotic kids' existence, then I say give director Thomas Balmes the Nobel.

 

Brian Cox

The Good Heart
Brian Cox & Paul Dano in The Good Heart

The tavern in which most of 'The Good Heart' unfolds is a Bronx cheer in the face of 'Cheers.' Here, even if the proprietor knows your name, he doesn't care about your well-being. He's in the business of 'destroying' his customers

 

Michael Caine

Harry Brown
Michael Caine & Emily Mortimer in Harry Brown

Letting his grave, limpid stare do most of the heavy lifting, Michael Caine makes not a single interpretive misstep in the British thriller Harry Brown. The tragedy is that the performance comes to nothing.

 

Bansky

Exit Through the Gift Shop
Thierry Guetta & Banksy in Exit Through the Gift Shop

It's billed as the first feature by the shadowy British street artist known as Banksy, who appears on-screen in literal shadows and a hoodie, with a digitally scrambled voice.

 

Brendan Fraser & Brooke Shields

Furry Vengeance
Brendan Fraser & Brooke Shields in Furry Vengeance

Brendan Fraser plays a well-meaning developer who has moved his family to a new subdivision in the middle of a pristine forest. The future roadkill of the forest aren't taking this deforestation lying down.

 

Jackie Earle Haley

A Nightmare on Elm Street
Jackie Earle Haley & Rooney Mara in A Nightmare on Elm Street

By today's standards, this remake of Wes Craven's iconic 1984 horror film is only medium-bloody, though it's more than usually grim. Yet it affords precious little sadistic pleasure, partly because it dares to lay out more directly the pedophiliac demons plaguing Freddy the serial killer

 

David Roberts & Claire van der Boom

The Square
David Roberts & Claire van der Boom in The Square

A nerve-racking noir from Australia, The Square is accompanied by a nine-minute curtain-raiser, a short film called Spider, from the same director, Nash Edgerton. The less you know about Spider the better. I'll say this much: There may be no more effective sucker-punch demonstration in the perils of taking a joke too far. It's fabulously sick

 

Zoe Saldana

The Losers
Jeffrey Dean Morgan & Zoe Saldana in The Losers

The comic-book adaptation The Losers drags you down to its level at gunpoint with its drooling fetishization of weaponry, its focus on Zoe Saldana in wee shorts, various and sundry assassinations designed with gamers in mind, and more rabid mistrust of the U.S. government than you'd find at a tea party fundraiser

 

Ricardo Darin & Soledad Villamil

The Secret in Their Eyes
Ricardo Darin & Soledad Villamil in The Secret in Their Eyes

From Argentina, The Secret in Their Eyes won this year's Academy Award for best foreign language film, besting such formidable titles as The White Ribbon and A Prophet. All three offer lessons in combining pulp and sociology, bringing to life geographically specific and richly detailed worlds on screen

 

Narration by Pierce Brosnan

Oceans
Narration by Pierce Brosnan in Oceans

The most arresting thing about Oceans is how unexpectedly bizarre many of the creatures that live deeper under the sea than either Charlie the Tuna or "The Little Mermaid's" Ariel actually look. This really is a film that manages to show us things we've never seen and make what we have already seen look different and new

 

Jennifer Lopez & Alex O'Loughlin

The Back-up Plan
Jennifer Lopez & Alex O'Loughlin in The Back-up Plan

Jennifer Lopez plays a Manhattan pet store owner whose wheelchair-bound dog is her only steady male companionship. Aussie hunk Alex O'Loughlin plays a cheese-maker who sells his wares at the Tribeca Farmers Market. They meet cute, and we wait for our heroine to reveal that she recently was artificially inseminated.

 

Chris Rock & Martin Lawrence

Death at a Funeral
Chris Rock & Martin Lawrence in Death at a Funeral

Ragged in its technique but pretty funny anyway, the remake of the 2007 British comedy Death at a Funeral won't please everyone, but seeing so many good, resourceful actors mix it up has its satisfactions.

 

David Duchovny & Demi Moore

The Joneses
David Duchovny & Demi Moore in The Joneses

The Joneses are a pretend family -- pretend husband and wife, with two fake teenage children -- who work as a four-person sales force, setting up shop in a new neighborhood. Their job is product placement, and they themselves, attractive and shiny, are the products.

 

The Perfect Game

The Perfect Game
Clifton Collins Jr. & Cheech Marin in The Joneses

In 1957, the Monterrey (Mexico) Industrials became the first team from outside the U.S. to win the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. Screenwriter W. William Winokur wrote the book on it, carrying the same title as his screenplay.

 

Aaron Johnson

Kick-Ass
Aaron Johnson & Christopher Mintz-Plasse in Kick-Ass

This super-violent superhero movie revels in geek revenge. High-schooler Dave Lizewski, who transforms himself into the self-appointed butt-thumper of the title, discovers there's a masked 10-year-old girl out on the mean streets already, going by the handle 'Hit Girl'.

 

Steve Carell & Tina Fey

Date Night
Steve Carell & Tina Fey in Date Night

Date Night is a product substantially inferior to the material routinely finessed by stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey, on their respective hit TV shows, into comic gold. A married couple leave the kids with a sitter and hit Manhattan for dinner. In an effort to be seated at a trendy restaurant, they claim another couple's vacated reservation, leading to mistaken-identity trouble.

 

Ciaran Hinds & Iben Hjejle

The Eclipse
Ciaran Hinds & Iben Hjejle in The Eclipse

Irish playwright, screenwriter and director Conor McPherson's fine, scary and touching new film -- The Eclipse -- is a tale of two hauntings. It's also a triumph for one actor, Ciaran Hinds, one of the best character actors in contemporary film, stepping into a leading role tailored for his baleful, sweet reserve and fierce emotional resources

 

Christina Ricci & Liam Neeson

After.Life
Christina Ricci & Liam Neeson in After.Life

After.Life's guessing game is simple. Either the tense schoolteacher played by Christina Ricci, who is a victim of a (fatal?) car accident, has expired and is being prepped for the afterlife by a funeral director played by Liam Neeson, or she's alive but about to become this calmly sinister authority figure's latest prey.

 

Jeffrey S.S. Johnson & Robyn Lively

Letters to God
Jeffrey S.S. Johnson & Robyn Lively in Letters to God

A little boy with cancer puts his fears, hopes and prayers into letters written to God. A troubled, cynical postman inherits the job of dealing with those letters, and taking that duty seriously changes his life. Although lip service is paid to cynicism and even skepticism in Letters to God, that's not what this indie drama is about. It's about how a child's faith spreads to those around him

 

Sam Worthington

Clash of the Titans
Sam Worthington & Liam Neeson in Clash of the Titans

'Clash of the Titans' could be the first film to actually be made worse by being in 3-D. The third dimension, especially in the action scenes, is more of a distraction than an enhancement. This remake of the creaky 1981 original is also hampered by a numbskull plot and plodding dialogue.

 

Miley Cyrus & Greg Kinnear

The Last Song
Miley Cyrus & Greg Kinnear in The Last Song

This adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel is primarily for teens looking for something disposable to cry about for a couple of hours. Miley Cyrus stars as a surly one-time piano prodigy who finds summer love, and Greg Kinnear turns in a credible performance as her dad.

 

Andy Garcia & Julianna Margulies

City Island
Andy Garcia & Julianna Margulies in City Island

Raymond De Felitta's screwball farce 'City Island' introduces us to the Rizzos, a boisterous party of four living in the tradition-steeped, seaside spit of Bronx real estate of the movie's title. The Rizzos don't talk to one another much, and when they do the neighbors undoubtedly hear every word.

 

Giovanna Mezzogiorno & Filippo Timi

Vincere
Giovanna Mezzogiorno & Filippo Timi in Vincere

One of the most surprising things about Vincere -- the story of Ida Dalser, Mussolini's secret wife, and his first-born son, Benito -- is that when the relationship went sour, Il Duce just didn't have her killed. Though Ida's life would become a torturous hell in an insane asylum, the legacy left by her letters has made for an intense and intriguing film

 

John Cusack & Rob Corddry

Hot Tub Time Machine
John Cusack & Rob Corddry in Hot Tub Time Machine

Three semi-estranged friends (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson) reunite for a skiing-and-drinking weekend at the mountain lodge they frequented back in the day. Turns out the hot tub's a time machine. That's the premise, and the movie sticks to it.

 

How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon
Jay Baruchel & Gerard Butler in How to Train Your Dragon

On the Island of Berk, the Vikings have been putting up with dragon attacks for 300 years. Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel) meets one of the dreaded beasts and learns dragons are a misjudged species, which puts him at odds with his father (Gerard Butler) and the rest of the village.

 

Ben Stiller & Greta Gerwig

Greenberg
Ben Stiller & Greta Gerwig in Greenberg

Ben Stiller plays an ex-musician who has moved from New York to L.A., where he becomes involved with his brother's personal assistant, an off-center beauty played by the talented Greta Gerwig. Director Noah Baumbach's curiously entrancing film responds to the push and pull of its characters rather than confining them to a conventional outline.

 

Julianne Moore & Liam Neeson

Chloe
Julianne Moore & Liam Neeson in Chloe

Julianne Moore plays a successful OB-GYN who suspects her husband (Liam Neeson), a college music professor, of something more than a pedagogical interest in one of his students. She sets out to trap her spouse using a high-end hooker named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) as bait.

 

Mother

Mother
Kim Hye-ja & Won Bin in Mother

Mother (Kim Hye-ja) devotes her life to looking out for her 20-something son, Do-joon (Won Bin), who seems to be brain-damaged. He's definitely not very bright, and his memory is wholly unreliable. When a local high school girl (Moon Hee-ra) is murdered, circumstantial evidence points in his direction. In no time flat, the cops persuade him to sign a confession. Case closed. But not for Mother.

 

Top Five College Movies to Watch & Learn From
Abragail Kappel - The Real College Guide

What is it about movies set on college campuses? So many of these films have become modern classics we find ourselves watching over and over again. That's why we decided to rent and review a few of our favorites, and re-evaluate them for their underlying lessons.

Twilight Saga Vampire Gossip
Girl World Daily

Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays Caius, and Edi Gathegi, who portrays Laurent, in The Twilight Saga: New Moon (dropping in a few days on DVD) have been out on the prowl. We caught up with the pair. In the flesh.

 

Kristen Stewart & Dakota Fanning

The Runaways
Kristen Stewart & Dakota Fanning in The Runaways

This rich, surprisingly old-fashioned musical biopic has neither the bloat nor blather of your average Hollywood treatment of stars on the rise. It's pungent and quick on its feet, capturing mid-1970s L.A. in look and spirit. Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), two-fifths of The Runaways, take center stage here.

 

Hubble 3D

Hubble 3D
Directed by Toni Myers - Hubble 3D

The spectacular new Imax film Hubble 3D will be studied by astronomers, academics and Hollywood special-effects artists for years to come. It's a movie that not only puts you in space, but lets you travel through it with a speed and wonder that would make James T. Kirk go a little weak in the knees.

 

Repo Men

Repo Men
Jude Law & Forest Whitaker in Repo Men

Plenty of body parts are forcibly removed in this violent futuristic action film: kidneys, hearts, livers, all high-tech and artificial, rented to the medically needy by a nasty corporation called The Union. But there's a key organ missing from the movie itself: a brain. This had the potential to be a funky, prescient piece of dystopian satire, but it falls flat despite its three game male leads

 

Aniston & Butler

The Bounty Hunter
Jennifer Aniston & Gerard Butler in The Bounty Hunter

Jennifer Aniston stars as a reporter on the trail of a police corruption scandal. She skips a court hearing to meet up with a snitch, and her ex-husband, a bounty hunter played by Gerard Butler, is thrilled to be the one bringing her in. But he owes some loan sharks, so everyone's trying to kill them, and they bicker and bicker and chase and chase and are chased and chased again.

 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Zachary Gordon & Robert Capron in Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Kids may enjoy this live-action film version of the Jeff Kinney books, but an astonishing percentage of the books' appeal has vanished. The petty jealousies, vindictive pranks and raging insecurities as endured by put-upon protagonist Greg Heffley were great fun on the page, thanks to the doodly, episodic energy of Kinney's journal entries

 

Noomi Rapace

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Michael Nyqvist & Noomi Rapace in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Feminist heroine or hypocrisy in black leather? There's an interesting debate regarding 'the girl' at the center of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' the film version of the internationally popular novel -- the first of three published, posthumously, after the death of journalist and crime novelist Stieg Larsson

 

Matt Damon

Green Zone
Matt Damon & Greg Kinnear in Green Zone

Director Paul Greengrass delivers a skillfully made package, but this feels like a too-soon proposition. Green Zone is partly real and partly outlandish in its wishful thinking. An Army officer hunting for WMDs in 2003, the fictional Miller (Matt Damon) knocks heads with everyone in Baghdad.

 

Jay Baruchel & Alice Eve

She's Out of My League
Jay Baruchel & Alice Eve in She's Out of My League

Jay Baruchel is the 21st-century Don Knotts, and even in a forgettable film like this one, his adenoidal, sidewinding line readings can make the stupidest material sound temporarily funny. An attractive babe (Alice Eve) coming off a bad relationship decides to give Kirk a try, much to the bewilderment of his goofball friends

 

Remember Me

Remember Me
Robert Pattinson & Emilie de Ravin in Remember Me

Teen audiences, particularly female, are likely to fall headlong into this dour romantic drama because Robert Pattinson and his fwoopy hair are both in it. Pattinson plays an NYU student who dares to ask out a girl (Emilie de Ravin) despite the fact that she's the daughter of the cop (Chris Cooper) who recently arrested him.

 

The Yellow Handkerchief

The Yellow Handkerchief
William Hurt & Maria Bello in The Yellow Handkerchief

This is a gentle, low-key road movie centering on the eternal need to love and to trust. A sweet-natured kid with wanderlust (Eddie Redmayne) passes through a tiny town in his vintage convertible and gives a lift to a pretty teen (Kristen Stewart) and to a middle-age man (William Hurt) of much kindness and concern for these two young people, but not eager to talk about himself.

 

Our Family Wedding

Our Family Wedding
America Ferrera & Lance Gross in Our Family Wedding

Instead of invitations, they should be sending out apologies for Our Family Wedding. Race as much as romance is at the heart of the matter, with director Rick Famuyiwa playing that card in nearly every scene. The film stars America Ferrera and Lance Gross as a couple traveling to L.A. to meet the parents and wed on the fly. This is a wasted opportunity to take a smart cut

Columbia University Celebrates Kathryn Bigelow, Its Big Oscar Winner
82nd Academy Awards Oscar Winners

You knew it was unavoidable: Colleges claiming Oscar winners the day after the glamorous event. And who can blame them? Why else would they have a 'Famous Alumni' section on Wikipedia?

 

Mia Wasikowska

Alice in Wonderland
Mia Wasikowska & Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland

Director Tim Burton's new extravaganza won't be for everyone. It's a little rough for preteens, and it doesn't throw many laughs the audience's way, but along with 'Sweeney Todd,' this is Burton's most interesting project in a decade. Wonderfully well-chosen actress Mia Wasikowska plays Alice, and Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter.

 

Richard Gere & Ethan Hawke

Brooklyn's Finest
Richard Gere & Don Cheadle in Brooklyn's Finest

This film lays out a big spread of law enforcement corruption, intertwining the tales of three cops in crisis. One (Ethan Hawke) has a plan to buy a better future. Another (Richard Gere) is a suicidally inclined alcoholic just days from retirement. The third and most interesting (Don Cheadle, one of the best actors alive) is an undercover detective in trouble every which way.

 

Alexis Bledel

The Good Guy
Alexis Bledel & Scott Porter in The Good Guy

Writer-director Julio DePietro draws from his previous life as an investment firm employee to tell a story of three New Yorkers: an urban conservationist (Alexis Bledel), her slick broker boyfriend (Scott Porter) and a conveniently located dreamboat (Bryan Greenberg) who may not be cut out for high finance and low morals but seems like a good guy to build a future around.

 

A Prophet

A Prophet
Tahar Rahim & Niels Arestrup in A Prophet

The crime sagas that end up ensnaring the public imagination often do so by delivering their thrills with a crafty sort of hypocrisy, casting the hero in a mold unnerving enough to keep the viewer on edge, but heroic (or attractively anti-heroic) enough to develop a rooting interest. Such is the case with 'A Prophet' a violent and gripping French film

 

Willis & Morgan

Cop Out
Bruce Willis & Tracy Morgan in Cop Out

Tracy Morgan plays the motor-mouth NYPD detective partner of Bruce Willis, and there's no reason these two couldn't headline a perfectly proficient action comedy. But this is a lousy, invention-free script, and Kevin Smith cannot do anything to save it

 

Ewan McGregor & Pierce Brosnan

The Ghost Writer
Ewan McGregor & Pierce Brosnan in The Ghost Writer

Director Roman Polanski turns a conventional conspiracy thriller into a triumph of atmospheric menace. A hated politician (Pierce Brosnan, playing a variant on ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair) owes his publisher an autobiography. Enter the ghost writer (Ewan McGregor), who arrives on Martha's Vineyard to research his subject.

 

Timothy Olyphant & Radha Mitchell

The Crazies
Timothy Olyphant & Radha Mitchell in The Crazies

One of the year's nicest bloody surprises, the remake of the 1973 George A. Romero virus thriller The Crazies must be approached with the proper expectations. It should not be judged for what it is not. But nearly everything about it works. The good people of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, turn into murderous lunatics, owing to a nearby downed plane carrying germ-warfare viral nastiness

 

Benno Furmann & Johanna Wokalek

North Face
Benno Furmann & Johanna Wokalek in North Face

In 1936, mountaineers Toni Kurz and Andi Hinterstoisser confront their own white hell and in an attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger, in the Bernese Swiss Alps. North Face, which generates undeniable tension though it's a film of oddly limited visual distinction, chronicles that attempt.

 

Cyril Raffaelli & David Belle

District 13: Ultimatum
Cyril Raffaelli & David Belle in District 13: Ultimatum

On the heels of 'From Paris With Love' is 'District 13: Ultimatum,' more frenzied action from style-conscious Gallic popcorn impresario Luc Besson, and a follow-up to 2004's 'District B13.' That cult hit took the reality of France's immigrant unrest and devised a future Paris in which the government has cynically walled off the most gang-infested and racially charged ghettos.

 

DiCaprio & Ruffalo

Shutter Island
Leonardo DiCaprio & Mark Ruffalo in Shutter Island

A U.S. marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his amiable new partner (Mark Ruffalo) hunt for an escaped patient at an insane asylum run by a shifty doctor (Ben Kingsley), whose island clinic may harbor sinister doings in the name of progressive health care.

 

Paul Bettany & Jennifer Connelly

Creation
Paul Bettany & Jennifer Connelly in Creation

There is angst, lots of it, for Paul Bettany to muck around in as he portrays the great evolutionist Charles Darwin. Not that angst is bad, but here it makes a muddle of Darwin's story. Even the sheer beauty of the setting and the attention to detail in re-creating his family life is not enough.

 

Parker Posey & Demi Moore

Happy Tears
Parker Posey & Demi Moore in Happy Tears

Writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein's second feature relays a bittersweet story of two grown sisters (Parker Posey and Demi Moore) who return to their girlhood Pittsburgh home to take care of their increasingly difficult father (Rip Torn), who has shacked up with his alleged 'nurse' (Ellen Barkin).

 

Rick Schroder & Nate Parker

Blood Done Sign My Name
Rick Schroder & Nate Parker in Blood Done Sign My Name

The film version of Tim Tyson's memoir 'Blood Done Sign My Name' reminds us just how difficult it is to tell a story. Tyson grew up the son of a Methodist minister. In 1970, the Tysons move to Oxford, N.C. where Tim's eyes are opened by the bloody history catching fire around him.

 

Benicio Del Toro & Anthony Hopkins

The Wolfman
Benicio Del Toro & Anthony Hopkins in The Wolfman

Someone or something is on the loose in late-1800s England, slaughtering Gypsies and good, upright English folk. When a famous Shakespearean actor (Benicio Del Toro) is attacked and begins showing signs of trouble, it's his father (Anthony Hopkins) who takes care of him, though he seems strangely interested in letting 'the beast' run free.

 

Jennifer Garner & Jessica Biel

Valentine's Day
Jessica Alba & Jessica Biel in Valentine's Day

Set in a sprawling, grime-free L.A., director Garry Marshall's 'Valentine's Day' is 'Crash' with hearts and flowers, an ensemble romantic comedy that believes in bulk. Is 'Valentine's Day' good? Not really, though plenty of the actors are. The massive cast includes Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Biel, Queen Latifah, Topher Grace and many others.

 

Logan Lerman & Brandon T. Jackson

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

The first installment in Rick Riordan's five-book series suggests that this could be the start of something adequate. Its limitations are less a matter of scale than of imagination. It may be director Chris Columbus' fate to initiate a fantasy franchise destined to be improved by his successors. Now, Columbus has taken on this fantasy construct in which Greek gods threaten war in modern-day America over Zeus' missing lightning bolt.

 

Steve Buscemi

Saint John of Las Vegas
Steve Buscemi & Romany Malco in Saint John of Las Vegas

The widely maligned indie 'Saint John of Las Vegas' has a tough commercial road ahead in the best of circumstances, given its size (tiny) and comic tone (eccentric but mild). What can I say? It's minor, but I enjoyed it, largely because of the people on-screen, but also for the sneaky sincerity of writer-director Hue Rhodes' chronicle of one compulsive gambler's slouch toward redemption.

 

Christopher Plummer

The Last Station
Christopher Plummer & Helen Mirren in The Last Station

Under the accomplished direction of Michael Hoffman, who also wrote the script, "The Last Station" is well-acted across the board, but the film's centerpiece is the spectacular back and forth between Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya, his wife of 48 years.

 

From Paris With Love

From Paris With Love
John Travolta & Jonathan Rhys Meyers in From Paris With Love

"From Paris With Love" doesn't do much for Paris or love, or your brain cells, but it flies like a crazed eagle on uppers. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a low-level spy and Paris embassy functionary who longs for more exciting work.

 

Dear John

Dear John
Channing Tatum & Amanda Seyfried in Dear John

Like The Blind Side, Dear John offers audiences a meat-and-potatoes story of love, loyalty, heartfelt generosity and other matters seldom brought to the screen with any skill at all.

 

Brendan Fraser & Harrison Ford

Extraordinary Measures
Brendan Fraser & Harrison Ford in Extraordinary Measures

This fact-based drama concerns a Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. marketing exec, John Crowley (Brendan Fraser), whose two kids contracted a rare form of muscular dystrophy. Racing against time to finance the development of a cure, Crowley's plight became a story of dedication, inspiration and not taking "no" for an answer. Harrison Ford plays the scowling, antisocial researcher who may hold the key to the kids' survival.

 

Horacio Camandule

Gigante
Horacio Camandule & Leonor Svarcas in Gigante

I don't know if Adrian Biniez ever wrote a song about a stalker when he was with the Argentinean band Reverb, but that's how Biniez's first feature-length film project, Gigante, turned out: like a catchy three-minute pop ballad, expanded artfully into an 84-minute ode to the fine line separating the shy-but-girlfriend-worthy loner from the genuine sociopath.

 

Dwayne Johnson

The Tooth Fairy
Dwayne Johnson & Ashley Judd in The Tooth Fairy

Dwayne Johnson stars as a minor-league hockey player known as The Tooth Fairy for his ability to knock his opponents' teeth all over the rink. The real tooth fairies do not approve of him, so he's lifted off to Fairyland, where Julie Andrews oversees his stint as a real tooth fairy whose wings sprout at inconvenient times.

 

Denzel Washington

The Book of Eli
Denzel Washington & Gary Oldman in The Book of Eli

The latest in a wave of post-apocalyptic films is this sly Mad Max-y sort of Western, pitting Denzel Washington as a high plains drifter with God on his side against Gary Oldman as the entrepreneur ruling a makeshift dirty town somewhere in what's left of the Southwestern United States.

 

Mark Wahlberg

The Lovely Bones
Mark Wahlberg & Rachel Weisz in The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson, best known for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, draws a fine performance from Saoirse Ronan as the murdered girl at the center of this story. But the adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel leaves out anything that isn't completely on point, and that does not favor the thriller and suspense aspects of the plot.

 

The Spy Next Door

The Spy Next Door
Jackie Chan & Billy Ray Cyrus in The Spy Next Door

Jackie Chan brings kinetic athleticism and an air of determined good cheer to even the most metallic of clunkers. It's hard to imagine anyone being offended by his new all-ages vehicle, except fans of good comedy.

 

The White Ribbon

The White Ribbon
Christian Friedel & Leonie Benesch in The White Ribbon

The White Ribbon set in 1913 relays a mystery, or rather a series of mysterious, increasingly vicious cruelties perpetrated by unknown parties in a northern German village. True to Haneke's temperament and stern moralist's outlook, "The White Ribbon" does not itself go in for much nuance of human behavior. There are a fragile handful of good people being suffocated by an ever-tightening circle of bad.

 

Heath Ledger

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Heath Ledger & Johnny Depp in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

When Heath Ledger died, this was the project he left half-finished. It would have stayed that way if Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell hadn't pitched in to finish it seamlessly. The head-spinning plot resists easy summation but is largely centered on shaman Dr. Parnassus (a letter-perfect Christopher Plummer), who runs a traveling show; his magic mirror; and his wagers with the devil incarnate, Mr. Nick. (Tom Waits).

 

Ethan Hawke & Willem Dafoe

Daybreakers
Ethan Hawke & Willem Dafoe in Daybreakers

In 2019, a bat-borne plague has reduced the human population by 95 percent and left vampires in charge. But the global blood supply is low. When the vampires go hungry, they wreak undead havoc. Ethan Hawke plays a vampire hematologist who's sworn off human blood. An encounter with a group of renegade humans leads him to a breakthrough and a chance to become human again.

 

Michael Cera & Portia Doubleday

Youth in Revolt
Michael Cera & Portia Doubleday in Youth in Revolt

"Youth in Revolt" isn't bad -- the cast is too good for it to be bad -- but archly comic coming-of-age fables are tricky things, and this adaptation of the first three C.D. Payne stories about an Oakland teenager's improbable life, times, fantasies and picaresque sexual adventures does not precisely feel like This Year's Stuff. Still, I laughed a fair bit.

 

Amy Adams & Matthew Goode

Leap Year
Amy Adams & Matthew Goode in Leap Year

This romantic comedy's genial performers -- Amy Adams and Matthew Goode -- do what they can to humanize material that puts the "ick" in "formulaic." Four years into her relationship with a cardiologist, Anna (Adams) is still waiting for a proposal. She chases down her beau at a convention in Dublin so she can follow the leap-year Irish tradition of proposing herself.

 

Marina Fois & Lorant Deutsch

The Joy of Singing (Le Plaisir de Chanter)
Marina Fois & Lorant Deutsch in The Joy of Singing

The blithely confounding narrative of the French sex comedy "The Joy of Singing" has something to do with uranium traffickers, though co-writer and director Ilan Duran Cohen is more interested in the carnal, as opposed to chemical, pursuits of his characters. You could start the year with far worse priorities.

 

Bryce Dallas Howard & Chris Evans

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
Bryce Dallas Howard & Chris Evans in The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond

In 1957, Tennessee Williams wrote a screenplay titled "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond." The project didn't come to pass -- until now, more than a half-century later. First-time director Jodie Markell has turned it into a showcase for actress Bryce Dallas Howard.

 

It's Complicated

It's Complicated
Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin in It's Complicated

It's Complicated isn't: It's pretty simple. It's simply a good time, a relatively adult and easygoing conveyance for three ace performers of a certain age...

 

Robert Downey Jr. & Jude Law

Sherlock Holmes
Robert Downey Jr. & Jude Law in Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie gives us "Sherlock Holmes," and I'm sorry, but I like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters. It's a drag to see how Ritchie has turned Holmes and Dr. Watson into thugs even though casting seems so right ...

 

Nine's Star-Studded Cast

Nine
Daniel Day-Lewis & Marion Cotillard in Nine

Based on Fellini's 8 1/2, this film is a mixed bag, but the cast ... wow! Director Rob Marshall has conceived Nine in almost precisely the same way he approached Chicago. Each number is imagined by its protagonist, in this case the illustrious film director in crisis, Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis). The movie illustrates scenes from Contini's tangled relationships with ...

 

Colin Firth & Julianne Moore

A Single Man
Colin Firth & Julianne Moore in A Single Man

Some films aren't revelations, exactly, but they burrow so deeply into old truths about love and loss and the mess and thrill of life, they seem new anyway. This is one such film, one of the best of 2009 ...

 

Jeff Bridges & Maggie Gyllenhaal

Crazy Heart
Jeff Bridges & Maggie Gyllenhaal in Crazy Heart

There's a powerful symmetry at work in Crazy Heart. It's a parallel between protagonist Bad Blake, a country singer at a nadir of disintegration, and star Jeff Bridges, whose exceptional film choices have put him at the height of his powers ...

 

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
Jason Lee & Zachary Levi in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

This is a kids comedy that screams Direct to DVD. It doesn't help that it screams that in high, squeaky, three-part harmony ...

 

Police, Adjective

Police, Adjective
Dragos Bucur & Vlad Ivanov in Police, Adjective

This exquisitely dry film comes from Romanian writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu. It's not for all tastes; it requires some patience. However, the more your own job involves absurd, time-consuming bits of minutiae, ...

 

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet
Directed by Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman is a grand dean of documentary filmmakers, a skilled observer whose patient, incessant, journalistic omniscience explores, exposes and dissects the folly of institutional life. La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet boasts Wiseman's detached, matter-of-fact cinematic observation

 

Sam Worthington & Zoe Saldana

Avatar
Sam Worthington & Zoe Saldana in Avatar

The first 90 minutes of Avatar are pretty terrific -- a full-immersion technological wonder with wonders to spare. The other 72 minutes, less and less terrific. Director James Cameron's futuristic story becomes intentionally grueling in its heavily telegraphed narrative turn toward genocidal anguish, grim echoes of Vietnam-style firefights and the inevitable payback time and sequel setup

 

The Movie 'Nine'

All-Star Cast Brings Big Guns to director Rob Marshall's 'Nine'
By Jon Burlingame

For the big screen 'Nine,' Marshall and his co-producer (and co-choreographer), John DeLuca, have further retooled the concept, casting double Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis as the Felliniesque Italian director Guido Contini and another five Oscar winners as the women who variously love and torment him

 

Hugh Grant & Sarah Jessica Parker

Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Hugh Grant & Sarah Jessica Parker in Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play the Morgans, a Manhattan power couple on the outs and the brink of divorce. He cheated on her, citing reasons of infertility-related stress; she is not in the forgiving vein and has already begun thinking about adoption on her own. He wants her back and proposes a trial reconciliation

 

Emily Blunt & Rupert Friend

The Young Victoria
Emily Blunt & Rupert Friend in The Young Victoria

Starring Emily Blunt as the 18-year-old queen of England circa 1837, this delicious historical romance is a rich pastiche of first love, teen empowerment, fabulous fashion and fate. Filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee has captured that hot blush of pure emotion that comes before kisses, sex and heartbreak. Credit also goes to Blunt and to Rupert Friend

 

Penelope Cruz & Lluis Homar

Broken Embraces
Penelope Cruz & Lluis Homar in Broken Embraces

Sleek and swank, director Pedro Almodovar's latest movie is destined to be overlooked come awards time. Broken Embraces reworks a slew of noir plot lines for a stimulating story of an affair between a call girl turned actress and her director

 

Ursula Werner & Horst Westphal

Cloud 9 (Wolke Neun)
Ursula Werner & Horst Westphal in Cloud 9

The German film Cloud 9, which is being distributed by Chicago's own Music Box Films, makes a case for a third, broader and more expansive image of mature sexuality. It's a small picture but a good one, truthfully acted and calmly compelling.

 

Invictus

Invictus
Morgan Freeman & Matt Damon in Invictus

This stately, impressive film from director Clint Eastwood is anchored by its actors. Morgan Freeman plays South African president and revolutionary game-changer Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon plays rugby captain Francois Pienaar. In the South African rugby team's long-shot chances for a victory in the 1995 World Cup Final, Mandela sees a grand opportunity.

 

Princess & the Frog

The Princess and the Frog
Anika Noni Rose & Bruno Campos in The Princess and the Frog

How can a good-looking animated feature with a Randy Newman song as kicky as 'When We're Human' end up being just sort of ... all right? Featuring Disney's first African-American princess, this movie lacks for nothing in setting and atmosphere but comes up short where it counts: the characters.

 

Zac Efron & Claire Danes

Me and Orson Welles
Zac Efron & Claire Danes in Me and Orson Welles

A real charmer, 'Me and Orson Welles' is the work of a director who takes nostalgia, romantic possibility and the theater seriously, without being a pill about it. Richard Linklater's film version of a Robert Kaplow novel tells a fairy tale based in fact. Strolling the Manhattan theater district one day in 1937, the story's fictional protagonist stumbles into Orson Welles and is hired to appear in Welles' modern-dress revival of 'Julius Caesar.'

 

George Clooney

Up in the Air
George Clooney & Vera Farmiga in Up in the Air

For a movie set in a sour economy, 'Up in the Air' is very crafty about lobbing to the sweet spots of all concerned. It is smooth as glass, destined for a big audience and many awards. George Clooney stars as a well-tailored hatchet man for an Omaha firm.

 

De Niro & Barrymore

Everybody's Fine
Robert De Niro & Drew Barrymore in Everybody's Fine

It's a relief to see Robert De Niro giving an honest, effective starring performance in a project that does not stink. How long has it been? This Americanized remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 'Stanno Tutti Bene' is gracefully acted by a good cast.

 

Maguire & Gyllenhaal

Brothers
Tobey Maguire & Jake Gyllenhaal in Brothers

This gripping film is an honorable addition to the tradition of homefront war stories. The stars playing the brothers of the film's title, Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal, have been effective in much of their respective screen work, but their best stuff here is the their best stuff to date.

 

Jennifer Lyons

Transylmania
Jennifer Lyons & Oren Skoog in Transylmania

Ten college 'types' set off for a semester of study at Romania's Razvan University, which is actually a castle where students occasionally disappear. Might the vampires who once ruled the roost be to blame?

 

Catalina Saavedra

The Maid
Catalina Saavedra & Mariana Loyola in The Maid

A spiky social comedy from Chile, Sebastian Silva's 'The Maid' features a marvelous, moon-eyed actress, Catalina Saavedra, as a sphinx-like servant who has lived, worked and, slowly, calcified for a bourgeois Santiago family for 23 of her 41 years.

 

Tony Leung & Takeshi Kaneshiro

Red Cliff
Tony Leung & Takeshi Kaneshiro in Red Cliff

Red Cliff tells the story of the pivotal Battle of Red Cliff, which finds vile Prime Minister Cao Cao leading an armada into the Southland of China to take on a rabble of rebellious warlords.

 

Rain & Naomie Harris

Ninja Assassin
Rain & Naomie Harris in Ninja Assassin

A deadly sect of super-secret ninjas stakes a claim to the ownership of our hero, who's trained to become the most lethal of all clan members. But he doesn't like the way they killed his sweetheart, so he bolts and goes undercover.

 

Viggo Mortensen & Kodi Smit-McPhee

The Road
Viggo Mortensen & Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Road

It's a miracle that this movie works at all, given the severity of its source, a 2006 Cormac McCarthy novel. The best thing about the film is Viggo Mortensen's performance. He plays the man with no name, a survivor of the global apocalypse, making his way to the coast with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) while scrounging for food and dodging cannibals and marauders.

 

George Clooney & Meryl Streep

Fantastic Mr. Fox
George Clooney & Meryl Streep in Fantastic Mr. Fox

So many clever visual felicities dot the landscape of Wes Anderson's animated feature, I'm flummoxed as to why the movie left me feeling up in the air.

 

John Travolta & Robin Williams

Old Dogs
John Travolta & Robin Williams in Old Dogs

Seven years after his whirlwind 24-hour marriage, an uptight Felix Unger-esque fellow learns he's the father of twins. He and his footloose-bachelor friend, end up baby-sitting these two for a couple of weeks, and unfunny chaos ensues

 

Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson

The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga: New Moon

This much-anticipated sequel is actually pretty good -- a tick better than the first 'Twilight,' which wasn't bad, either. The second film in the series is bigger, better in the effects and more vibrant visually.

 

Nicolas Cage & Eva Mendes

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Nicolas Cage & Eva Mendes in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Director Werner Herzog's delirious new movie is a true feat of daring and one of the craziest films of the year. The drug-abusing cop has been relocated from New York to New Orleans, and in place of Keitel's fits of anguish, Herzog has found his ideal interpreter, a performer whose truth lies deep in the artifice of performance: Nicolas Cage, at his finest

 

Ben Foster & Woody Harrelson

The Messenger
Ben Foster & Woody Harrelson in The Messenger

A decorated Army soldier (Ben Foster) with post-traumatic stress disorder is assigned to the Casualty Notification program, meaning that he and a fellow officer (Woody Harrelson) must deliver news of a fallen soldier's death to family members. This pungent little chamber piece offers a full yet delicate range of emotions, and it humanizes its characters so that polemics are left in the background.

 

Sandra Bullock & Tim McGraw

The Blind Side
Sandra Bullock & Tim McGraw in The Blind Side

Based on a book by Michael Lewis, this film fumbles a true story of an African-American product of the Memphis projects who ended up at a Christian school and in the care of a wealthy white family, then went on to NFL glory. The star is Sandra Bullock, whose character is conceived as a steel magnolia with a will of iron.

 

Dwayne Johnson & Justin Long

Planet 51
Dwayne Johnson & Justin Long in Planet 51

The big joke here is that an alien has 'invaded' a suburban town. The alien is us, a NASA astronaut (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) who touches down and bounces out with his American flag, only to realize he's interrupting an alien barbecue. This is a good-looking movie; it's just low on laughs.

 

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Pirate Radio
Philip Seymour Hoffman & Bill Nighy in Pirate Radio

With nearly 60 classic cuts, this may be the coolest music video masquerading as a movie ever. It's hard not to feel the love as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans and others in the groovy ensemble spin this mostly tall tale of the English Parliament's fight to crush rock radio and the rogue broadcasters who went to sea to keep it afloat

 

John Cusack

2012
John Cusack & Chiwetel Ejiofor in 2012

'2012' samples everything from 'Earthquake' to 'The Perfect Storm' to 'The Towering Inferno' to the Bible. John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson are among the actors pushing along whatever 'story' you can find here.

 

Jocelin Donahue

The House of the Devil
Jocelin Donahue & Greta Gerwig in The House of the Devil

This is a fine little old-school thriller set in the 1980s. A cash-strapped college student (Jocelin Donahue) accepts a babysitting job at a scary old Victorian home, but once she arrives, she discovers there's no baby to sit; her charge is the unseen mother of a lanky pair of creeps (Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov).

 

Tony Jaa

Ong Bak 2
Tony Jaa & Primrata Dej-Udom in Ong Bak 2

Tony Jaa, Thailand's biggest action hero, returns to inflict more damage in 'Ong Bak 2: The Beginning. ' Given its title, you might expect that this film has some connection to the original 'Ong Bak' of a few years back, but you would be wrong.

 

Sean Patrick Flanery & Norman Reedus

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
Sean Patrick Flanery & Norman Reedus

This movie gives so much a bad name: Irish pride, clumsy sequel titles containing colons, ethnic slurs, and Judd Nelson's inability to say 'when' as an over-actor. In the original, the MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus) were sort of human. This time, they're just glib killing machines, out to eliminate the gangsters (led by Nelson) responsible for killing a Boston priest.

 

Michael Angarano & Jemaine Clement

Gentlemen Broncos
Michael Angarano & Jemaine Clement in Gentlemen Broncos

The latest collaboration from Jared and Jerusha Hess is about a home-schooled square of a kid who writes cheesy sci-fi fantasy books that belie his introverted demeanor. After his best manuscript is plagiarized by a pompous author whose career is on the skids (Jemaine Clement), our young hero finds himself facing a weird series of personal and creative challenges.

 

Gabourey Sidibe

Precious
Gabourey Sidibe in Precious

Precious is an exceptional film about nearly unendurable circumstances, endured. The story is about a teen living in 1980s Harlem, raped by her barely glimpsed father, abused by her unfathomably cruel mother. Precious is illiterate but bright, and she switches to an alternative school where she comes under the life-saving tutelage of Ms. Rain. There'll be an Oscar nomination or two in this film's near future

 

Jim Carrey & Gary Oldman

Disney's A Christmas Carol
Jim Carrey & Gary Oldman in Disney's A Christmas Carol

Disney's A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens -- demoted!), is an extravaganza of colliding intentions. But just when you're ready to give up on it, Zemeckis reminds you that he's capable of true visual dynamism, enhanced but not wholly dictated by the digital landscape he so clearly adores. Plus, Jim Carrey is good as Scrooge

 

Michael Jackson's This Is It
Michael Jackson in Michael Jackson's This Is It

Produced with the cooperation of the Jackson estate, "This Is It" has no interest in telling the full story of anything, or the crumbling state of anyone. Director Kenny Ortega -- Jackson's partner in staging the London concert that never came to fruition -- is simply trying to suggest in some detail what sort of overstuffed career retrospective Jackson was attempting

Is It Legal to Copy a DVD?
David LaGesse

Consumers are accustomed to copying music disks to their computers, making it easy to transfer them to portable MP3 players like the iPod. Many wonder why they can't do the same with movies on DVD. Two recent court rulings nixed novel approaches that sought to make it easy and legal for consumers to copy DVDs to computers and elsewhere. Here's a quick guide to what the courts have said, what it means to consumers

 

Carey Mulligan & Peter Sarsgaard

An Education
Carey Mulligan & Peter Sarsgaard in An Education

Novelist Nick Hornby's screenplay for British journalist Lynn Barber's memoir sands a few edges off the corners of its heroine's story, yet the film is awfully charming. It bops along with so much esprit and lively acting.

 

Hilary Swank & Richard Gere

Amelia
Hilary Swank & Richard Gere in Amelia

This Amelia Earhart biopic isn't a bad movie, but it's distressingly ordinary for such an extraordinary subject. Played by an aptly cast and game Hilary Swank, Earhart becomes a checklist of Historical Legend accomplishments

 

Astro Boy Anime Movie Feature

Astro Boy
Freddie Highmore & Kristen Bell in Astro Boy

Astro Boy first appeared in a Japanese comic in 1951. His adventures led to a '60s Japanese TV series, then to the first of the American spin-offs, and now "Astro Boy" hits the big screen. I wish the film version of "Astro Boy" provided a stronger antidote to mediocrity. With the voices of Freddie Highmore, Kristen Bell and Nicolas Cage

 

John C. Reilly & Patrick Fugit

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
John C. Reilly & Patrick Fugit in Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

In this campy vampire flick, the truce between vampires who sip, leaving humans a little weaker but none the wiser, and those who gorge, leaving death and destruction behind, comes to an end. This is an adaptation of the frothy kids book series by Darren Shan.

 

Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are
Max Records & Catherine Keener in Where the Wild Things Are

Based on Maurice Sendak's 338-word storybook, Spike Jonze's film strikes minor chords and plaintive emotions where other directors would've gone for the throat. A boy (Max Records) coping with a household unsteadied by divorce sets sail for an island where the Wild Things wrestle with the same clique issues and hurt feelings the boy deals with back home.

 

Michael Sheen & Timothy Spall

The Damned United
Michael Sheen & Timothy Spall in The Damned United

This engaging film, a winner for soccer fans and soccer idiots alike, focuses on Brian Clough, one-time English footballer turned failed manager of the Leeds United club. Michael Sheen, who played David Frost in 'Frost/Nixon,' portrays Clough

 

Jamie Foxx & Gerard Butler

Law Abiding Citizen
Jamie Foxx & Gerard Butler in Law Abiding Citizen

Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx star in this brutal, preposterous revenge fantasy that taps into a lot of fears about the American legal system. Butler plays a gadget-maker who survives the slaughter of his family and sets out to get even, and then some. Foxx is the politically ambitious Philadelphia prosecutor who lets one of the killers get off easy so the other will be executed.

 

Natalie Portman & Maggie Q

New York, I Love You
Natalie Portman & Maggie Q in 'New York, I Love You'

The ongoing 'Cities We Love' project that began three years ago with 'Paris, je t'aime' continues its global exploration with 'New York, I Love You.' Eleven directors and 16 screenwriters contributed to the omnibus affair. I like the idea of the film more than the film itself; the batting average with the Paris project was a good deal higher. Nonetheless, this one provides some compensatory satisfactions

 

Vince Vaughn & Jason Bateman

Couples Retreat
Vince Vaughn & Jason Bateman in Couples Retreat

Four couples on a tropical retreat think they're in for umbrella drinks and beach time. They're met instead with a stern regimen of 'couples-whispering' tactics. Though it boasts a good cast that also includes Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell and Jon Favreau, 'Couples Retreat' is pretty meager and more than a little depressing.

 

Michael Stuhlbarg & Richard Kind

A Serious Man
Michael Stuhlbarg & Richard Kind in A Serious Man

Set in 1967 in the Minneapolis suburbs, 'A Serious Man' is a tart, brilliantly acted fable of life's little cosmic difficulties, a Coen brothers comedy with a darker philosophical outlook than 'No Country for Old Men' but with a script rich in verbal wit.

 

Chris Rock & Paul Mooney

Good Hair
Chris Rock & Paul Mooney in Good Hair

Comedian Chris Rock's 'Good Hair' consists of two documentaries braided together, one enjoyable, the other enjoyable and provocative. Rock and a film crew covered the 2007 edition of the Bronner Bros. Hair Show in Atlanta and its climactic Hair Battle Royale

 

Corbin Bleu & Penelope Ann Miller

Free Style
Corbin Bleu & Penelope Ann Miller in Free Style

Corbin Bleu may have graduated from "High School Musical," but he stays close to his Disney Channel roots in "Free Style," a squeaky-clean sports flick about a poor kid with big dreams (and bigger hair) trying to make it in the motocross world.

 

Michael Moore

Capitalism: A Love Story
Michael Moore in Capitalism: A Love Story

At its best, this uneven work represents Michael Moore at the peak of his argumentative skills. Roughly a third of its anecdotal and illustrative footage hinges on precise details strong enough to support Moore's wider indictments of the Western world's preferred way to make a buck and treat its citizenry. It is the right time to be dealing with these questions

 

Ricky Gervais & Jennifer Garner

The Invention of Lying (3 Stars)
Ricky Gervais & Jennifer Garner in The Invention of Lying

In the world according to 'The Invention of Lying,' truth rules because no one has thought of the alternative. First encounters are brutal. And then comes the epochal First Lie Ever. The movie may be softer than you'd expect from Gervais, but the premise is so rich, you forgive the problems.

 

Woody Harrelson & Jesse Eisenberg

Zombieland
Woody Harrelson & Jesse Eisenberg in Zombieland

Honing the dry comic skills he brought to "Adventureland," Jesse Eisenberg plays a kid from Columbus, Ohio, who joins head-splattering forces with Woody Harrelson, having a high old time as humankind's last best hope. It's a strangely high-spirited lark, giving its leading players plenty to eviscerate in between sweet nothings and wisecracks

 

Ellen Page & Marcia Gay Harden

Whip It
Ellen Page & Marcia Gay Harden in Whip It

Drew Barrymore's feature directorial debut runs on an easygoing mixture of cliches and grrrl-power, and its cast is good company. (Nice to see Kristen Wiig of 'Saturday Night Live' in more than a novelty role.) A young heroine named Bliss (Ellen Page of 'Juno') goes from the world of teen beauty pageants to roller derby competition after meeting a fiercely alluring gang of roller derby queens.

 

Clive Owen & Nicholas McAnulty

The Boys Are Back
Clive Owen & Nicholas McAnulty in The Boys Are Back

Clive Owen plays a sports columnist in Australia whose life is upended when his wife (Laura Fraser) dies and he must juggle a return to work with a 6-year-old (Nicholas McAnulty) who doesn't grasp Mom's death. His laissez-faire approach to parenting shocks relatives, but the consequences of it don't fully manifest themselves until a son from an earlier marriage (George MacKay) shows up

 

Patton Oswalt & Kevin Corrigan

Big Fan
Patton Oswalt & Kevin Corrigan in Big Fan

Starring comedian Patton Oswalt, 'Big Fan' is a poignant, dead-on examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants football fans. Its situations can be outrageous, but its sense of the core reality it describes is impeccable.

 

Katie Featherston & Micah Sloat

Paranormal Activity (2 1/2 Stars)
Katie Featherston & Micah Sloat in Paranormal Activity

A middle-class couple (Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat) living in a San Diego subdivision set up a camcorder with night vision to see what's making weird noises in their home every night, and they gather video evidence that something is messing with their relationship

 

Debbie Allen & Charles S. Dutton

Fame (2 1/2 Stars)
Debbie Allen & Charles S. Dutton in Fame

One's response to this happy, PG-rated remake, which stands in stark contrast to the R-rated pre-"High School Musical" original, probably depends on your personal relationship to the old version. The newer version, with a cast that includes Debbie Allen and Kelsey Grammer, has a sweet spirit and offers only one true moment of inadvertent camp

 

Abbie Cornish & Ben Whishaw

Bright Star (2 1/2 Stars)
Abbie Cornish & Ben Whishaw in Bright Star

Jane Campion's first feature since 'In the Cut' six years ago is a scrupulously well-crafted film about the relationship between poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and quick-witted Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). In a way Campion's film is a thing of beauty, reveling in both romantic love and the allure of the Romantic poets, yet ...

 

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Bill Hader & Anna Faris in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Fairly inventive and exceedingly manic, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" comes from the 1978 picture book by Judi and Ron Barrett. Inventor Flint (voiced by Bill Hader) perfects a machine that turns water into food. ...

 

Matt Damon & Scott Bakula

The Informant
Matt Damon & Scott Bakula in The Informant

In this deliciously deadpan comedy from director Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon gets a chance to work his sly comic chops in the role of a biochemist who becomes a corporate whistle-blower. Based on Kurt Eichenwald's exhaustive nonfiction chronicle, the film is both outlandish and subtle.

 

Megan Fox & Amanda Seyfried

Jennifer's Body
Megan Fox & Amanda Seyfried in Jennifer's Body

Striving for horror, comedy and anti-mean-girl empowerment, Jennifer's Body wants it all. Yet the tone wavers, the direction's slackly indecisive and visually drab, and in the middle of it is a thinly conceived antagonist played by Megan Fox.

 

Aaron Eckhart & Jennifer Aniston

Love Happens
Aaron Eckhart & Jennifer Aniston in Love Happens

Aaron Eckhart plays a best-selling therapist and grief guru whose bereavement counseling gig in Seattle is improved when he meets a flower arranger played by Jennifer Aniston.

 

Charlize Theron & Kim Basinger

The Burning Plain (2 1/2 Stars)
Charlize Theron & Kim Basinger in The Burning Plain

Charlize Theron once again plays a damaged woman running from her past. But storytelling tricks make this an intriguing outing for her, with a cast that includes fellow Oscar winner Kim Basinger and John Corbett.

 

Elijah Wood & Christopher Plummer

9 Animated Feature Movie Review
Elijah Wood & Christopher Plummer in 9 Animated Feature

This animated feature throws viewers headlong into a post-apocalyptic universe where life has come down to the vicious combat between machines resembling metallic dinosaurs and a tiny band of survivors. Director Shane Acker's fantasy comes from his superb 2004 short subject.

 

Kate Beckinsale & Gabriel Macht

Whiteout (1 1/2 Stars)
Kate Beckinsale & Gabriel Macht in Whiteout

"Whiteout" comes from a graphic novel about a U.S. Marshal stationed in Antarctica. A corpse is found on the ice, but it's not just another case of severe frostbite. It's murder, and the murderer has a motive that relates in some way to the Cold War-era prologue ...

 

The September Issue

This easygoing, entertaining documentary is about a triumph of advertising and frippery over rational thinking: the September 2007 issue of Vogue, hundreds of pages long, fraught with backstage machinations and editorial mishaps.

 

Demetri Martin - Taking Woodstock

Taking Woodstock
Demetri Martin & Henry Goodman in Taking Woodstock

Director Ang Lee has never made a bad film, and the genial comedy 'Taking Woodstock' certainly doesn't break his streak. Based on a memoir by Elliot Tiber, the movie is a mosaic ...

 

Haden Church, Sandra Bullock and
Bradley Cooper

All About Steve
Sandra Bullock & Thomas Haden Church in All About Steve

There's nothing wrong with this movie that a rewrite couldn't fix, as long as the rewrite involved a different writer, a different character and a different story. Bullock plays Mary, a daffy optimist who can't take a hint ...

 

Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis in Extract

Extract
Jason Bateman & Mila Kunis

Written and directed by Mike Judge, this bookend to 'Office Space' features the excellent Jason Bateman as a small businessman trying to dodge a lawsuit following a mishap at his factory while also trying to ...

 

Alexie Gilmore and Robin Williams

World's Greatest Dad
Robin Williams & Alexie Gilmore in World's Greatest Dad

Writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait's film about the human need for reinvention and revisionism stars Robin Williams as a high school English teacher with a repellant teenage son. Goldthwait is interested in mining the human condition, but ...

 

Renée Zellweger, Logan Lerman,
Mark Rendall

My One and Only
Renee Zellweger & Kevin Bacon in My One and Only

Set in the early 1950s, 'My One and Only' stars Renee Zellweger as a young actor-to-be's mother, a reckless, madcap figure of glamour.

 

Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds
Brad Pitt & Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

A queasy historical do-over, Quentin Tarantino's new film has been described as a grindhouse version of "Valkyrie"; a rhapsody dedicated to the cinema's powers of persuasion; and a showcase for Austrian-born character actor Christoph Waltz, who waltzes off with the performance honors as a suavely vicious Nazi colonel.

 

Cast of Post Grad

Post Grad
Alexis Bledel & Zach Gilford in Post Grad

In this minor but agreeable romantic comedy, a college graduate (Alexis Bledel) moves back in with her folks (Michael Keaton and Jane Lynch) and tries to decide between the hunk next door (Rodrigo Santoro) and her lovesick pal (Zach Gilford).

 

Rodriguez, Gagnon, Howard

Shorts
Jon Cryer & William H. Macy in Shorts

This children's movie focuses on an 11-year-old (Jimmy Bennett) with multiple tormentors and a rainbow-colored rock that grants wishes. There are holes in the story that a 3-year-old could point out ...

 

Jim Sturgess

Fifty Dead Men Walking
Jim Sturgess & Ben Kingsley in Fifty Dead Men Walking

"Fifty Dead Men Walking" tells a highly charged version of one informant's life story, which is also the story of multiple near-deaths. This sharp, well-acted film is based on the autobiography of Martin McGartland (Jim Sturgess), a West Belfast Catholic who in the late 1980s insinuated himself into the good graces of the Irish Republican Army in order to funnel intelligence to the occupying British forces. Writer-director Kari Skogland keeps the players vivid and relatively honest, and never shies away from the brutalities.

 

X Games 3D: The Movie

X Games 3D: The Movie (2 Stars)
Shaun White & Travis Pastrana in X Games 3D: The Movie

As a repackaging of last year's Summer X Games using the latest in 3-D camera technology, Disney's limited-run extreme sports doc "X Games 3D: The Movie" is an uneven thrill-circus display that too often feels like TV writ large and loud rather than cinematic reimagining ...

 

Bandslam
Aly Michalka, Vanessa Hudgens & Gaelan Connell in Bandslam

"Bandslam" is a pretty good movie, and the odds of its being a pretty bad movie were pretty steep. A lonely new kid in town (Gaelan Connell) becomes manager of teen band fronted by cutest girl on planet (Aly Michalka). If band wins big Bandslam contest, it's a record deal and fame.

 

District 9
Sharlto Copley & Jason Cope in District 9

The premise: An enormous UFO descended from the sky 20 years ago, hovered over Johannesburg and stayed there. Then humans got curious and opened it up, and out spilled a million-plus alien creatures, leading to an immigration crisis.

 

Ponyo
Noah Cyrus & Tina Fey in Ponyo

The title character in this animated feature is a goldfish (voiced by Noah Cyrus, Miley's sister) who longs to become human. Five minutes into this magical film you'll be making lists of the people you can expose to the special mixture of fantasy and folklore.

 

The Time Traveler's Wife
Rachel McAdams & Eric Bana in The Time Traveler's Wife

This film's best feature is Rachel McAdams in the title role of the serenely long-suffering mate of a man born with a dilly of a chromosomal irregularity. Involuntarily, usually at inconvenient times, Henry (Eric Bana) zwoops to an entirely different locale and chronological point in his lifetime

 

The Goods: Live-Hard. Sell Hard
Jeremy Piven & Ving Rhames in The Goods: Live-Hard. Sell Hard.

Sloppy, grimy but quick on its feet, "The Goods" stars Jeremy Piven as Don "The Goods" Ready, the swiftest shark in the used-car business. He and some other rogue salesfolk are hired by a used-car legend (James Brolin) to move the inventory, pronto, over a Fourth of July weekend.

 

Julie & Julia
Meryl Streep & Amy Adams in Julie & Julia

Writer-director Nora Ephron adapts and intertwines two books: Julia Child's "My Life in France" and Julie Powell's "Julie & Julia." The latter grew out of Powell's online experiment, a year spent cooking and blogging her way through the seminal Child volume "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." It may not make for great cinema, but you go to a movie like this for the sauces and stews, and for the considerable pleasure of seeing (and listening to) Meryl Streep's drolly exuberant performance as Child. Amy Adams is also very good as Powell

A Perfect Getaway
Steve Zahn, Timothy Olyphant, Milla Jovovich, Kiele Sanchez in A Perfect Getaway

Nothing is what it seems in this cockamamie but enjoyable honeymoon-fiasco picture. A newly married screenwriter (Steve Zahn) and his bride (Milla Jovovich) travel to Kauai, where they encounter a good-looking pair of secretive, possibly psychopathic hitchhikers (Marley Shelton and Chris Hemsworth) and, later, a good-looking pair of secretive, possibly psychopathic travelers (Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez).

Paper Heart
Charlyne Yi & Michael Cera in Paper Heart

A clever hybrid of a film that swings between comedy, documentary and puppet re-enactments with the slightest push from its stars -- Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera -- as variations on themselves. This romantic fable begins with the notion that Yi doesn't believe in fairy tales when it comes to love. She confronts her state of disillusionment with a search for what love means to all types of people. But "real" life, in the form of Cera, who suddenly emerges as possible boyfriend material, complicates everything.

Adam
Hugh Dancy & Rose Byrne in Adam

A toy engineer (Hugh Dancy) with the high-functioning autism classified as Asperger's syndrome becomes romantically involved with a neighbor in his Manhattan apartment building (Rose Byrne). Sweet, simple and more than a little dodgy, writer-director Max Mayer's film gets a lift from its ensemble cast, thereby proving that a film's acting typically is the least of its problems.

The Answer Man (2 Stars)
Jeff Daniels & Lauren Graham in The Answer Man

Director John Hindman has basically remade "As Good As It Gets," subbing sentiment for sharpness and displaying an alarming aversion to reality. Leads Jeff Daniels and Lauren Graham swim mightily against sitcom tidiness, but the tide carries them out to sea. Daniels plays a misanthropic writer who shut himself off from the world after his self-help book made a splash.

Funny People
Adam Sandler & Seth Rogen in Funny People

Director Judd Apatow digs into the question of what makes charismatically desperate comedians do what they do, and this film is also Apatow's attempt to reconcile the huge success he has become with the up-and-comer he once was. When a comic turned movie star (Adam Sandler) is diagnosed with leukemia, he must change his ways and reconnect with those he's sealed off from his life. His new assistant (Seth Rogen) acts as his apprentice, sounding board and punching bag

Shrink
Kevin Spacey & Mark Webber in Shrink

Two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey portrays a self-help book author and therapist to the Hollywood stars, left numb by his wife's suicide. By day he fakes interest in his twitchy clients (played by, among others, Robin Williams and Saffron Burrows). The movie ties everything and everyone together with extreme neatness.

Humpday
Mark Duplass & Joshua Leonard in Humpday

Ben (Mark Duplass) has settled down and plans to start a family when old friend Andrew (Joshua Leonard) shows up in the middle of the night and is plainly still living a free life full of artistic (and sexual) possibilities, causing Ben to question his own path. On a dare, Ben lets Andrew talk him into embarking on an art project

Orphan
Vera Farmiga & Peter Sarsgaard in Orphan

In "Orphan," Vera Farmiga plays Kate, the unraveling mother of a malevolent 9-year-old adoptee hellbent on familial destruction. A year after a stillbirth, fragile Kate and architect husband John (Peter Sarsgaard) visit the local orphanage, and are drawn to a raven-haired loner named Esther, played by Isabelle Fuhrman with the sort of unearthly composure that screams, "You should've picked the other one!"

G-Force (2 Stars)
Nicolas Cage & Sam Rockwell in G-Force

The new Disney macho rodent action picture, "G-Force," has the vibe of a typical R-rated Jerry Bruckheimer headbanger. Its sensibility isn't so much childish as smarmily adolescent. Luckily, Nicolas Cage is amusing voicing the commando mole, Speckles, single-handedly giving this energetically soulless enterprise some personality.

The Ugly Truth
Katherine Heigl & Gerard Butler in The Ugly Truth

Yet another romantic comedy portraying a career woman as a harpy with nice clothes and no dates, "The Ugly Truth" feels about 150 years out of date -- or it would, if the script weren't so clinically dependent on the topics of masturbation and genitalia and raunch.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Emma, Watson, Daniel Radcliffe & Rupert Grint

This meticulously atmospheric, wonderfully acted Potter adventure lands happily -- broodingly, but happily -- near the top of the series heap. As the concerns of novelist J.K. Rowling's characters gravitate toward matters of the heart and the hormones, the Potter films are leaving childhood behind.

500 Days of Summer
Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays L.A. greeting-card writer Tom, whose heart gets kicked around by free-spirited co-worker Summer (Zooey Deschanel). As Tom sifts through memories of his time with Summer, the movie clicks onto different days, out of order, letting us eavesdrop on one vignette or conversation or argument after another. "Days" plays some fun structural mind games, Deschanel is captivating, and the film has an easygoing, inquisitive spirit.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker
Jeremy Renner & Anthony Mackie in The Hurt Locker

Vivid, assured and extremely suspenseful, director Kathryn Bigelow's latest (and strongest) film takes moviegoers by the collar and throws them headlong into one horrifying life-and-death situation after another. Jeremy Renner plays a soldier in Iraq running toward the explosives while everyone else is ducking and covering.

 

Bruno
Sacha Baron Cohen & Gustaf Hammarsten in Bruno

Extraordinarily raunchy, occasionally funny, Bruno takes everything Borat did so well three years ago and pushes it further, swapping one primary target for another. But comic nerve has little to do with sheer excess. The fashionista at the center of Bruno" is a pretty tedious fellow ...

I Love You Beth Cooper
Hayden Panettiere & Paul Rust in I Love You Beth Cooper

Provides so few laughs, I nearly wandered out of the theater midway to go look for some somewhere. Columbus strains to set up sight gags. You may wince, but it's not a ha-ha wince. Both as written and acted, Denis quickly becomes a tedious motormouth, not helped by Columbus' uncertain pacing, with big, blobby pauses clogging up the plot machinery.

Blood: The Last Vampire
Gianna & Allison Miller in Blood: The Last Vampire

A beautiful half-human, half-vampire government agent (played by one-named South Korean star Gianna) hunts demons in Japan with her American schoolgirl sidekick during the Vietnam War. If you're going "huh?" already, just wait. ...

Public Enemies
Johnny Depp in Public Enemies

Johnny Depp stars as charismatic Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger, and Christian Bale plays G-man Melvin Purvis. The film is a fascinating bundle of contradictions -- authentic in a million details, deeply romanticized in others. Cool, calm and collected, this is more love story than gangster picture (Marion Cotillard plays Dillinger's lover), and it's more vivid around the edges than at its center. Yet a genuine filmmaking intelligence guides every scene

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80th Academy Awards Nominations and Oscar Winners 2008

80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Winners and Stories
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Winners

"No Country" wins Best Picture, Best Director. Daniel Day-Lewis wins best actor for his role in "There Will Be Blood". Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton Win Supporting Role Academy Awards, "Ratatouille" awarded Oscar for Best Animation Feature

Best Picture Academy Award Nominees

Atonement
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Nomination

Filmed on location in the United Kingdowm, the films story spans several decades.

In 1935, 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous mansion. On the warmest day of the year, the country estate takes on an unsettling hothouse atmosphere, stoking Brionys vivid imagination. Robbie Turner (Mr. McAvoy), the educated son of the familys housekeeper, carries a torch for Brionys headstrong older sister Cecilia (Ms. Knightley). Cecilia, he hopes, has comparable feelings; all it will take is one spark for this relationship to combust.

Juno
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Nomination

Meet Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) – a confidently frank teenage girl who calls the shots with a nonchalant cool and an effortless attitude as she journeys through an emotional nine-month adventure into adulthood. Quick witted and distinctively unique, Juno walks Dancing Elk High's halls to her own tune - preferably anything by The Stooges - but underneath her tough no nonsense exterior is just a teenage girl trying to figure it all out.

Michael Clayton
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Nomination

George Clooney stars in the title role of Michael Clayton, a "fixer" at Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, a top Manhattan law firm. A former criminal prosecutor from a working-class neighborhood, Clayton is an anomaly at the white-shoe firm; in spite of his 15-year tenure, he has not been promoted to partner and probably never will be. His boss, Marty Bach, sees Clayton as an invaluable asset to the firm, but only in his "niche," one that is relegated to cleaning up the firm’s sticky situations quickly and quietly.

No Country For Old Men
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Picture

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a mesmerizing new thriller from Academy Award winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the acclaimed novel by Pulitzer Prizewinning American master, Cormac McCarthy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. Featuring a cast that includes Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones ("The Fugitive," "Men in Black"), Josh Brolin ("Grindhouse"), Academy Award®-nominee Javier Bardem ("The Sea Inside"), Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson ("The People Vs. Larry Flynt") and Kelly Macdonald ("Trainspotting")

There Will Be Blood
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Picture

A sprawling epic about family, faith, power and oil, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the radical frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the rise of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon.

Best Actress Academy Award Noinations

Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth: The Golden Age
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actress Nomination

Cate Blanchett's fifth nomination and the second in this category. Cate was also nominated for her leading role in Elizabeth (1998). Her supporting role nominations were for The Aviator (2004), for which she won the Oscar, and Notes on a Scandal (2006). She is also nominated this year in the supporting category for I’m Not There.

Julie Christie as "Fiona Anderson" in Away from Her
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actress Nomination

Julie Christie's fourth nomination in this category. Her other nominations were for Darling (1965), for which she won an Oscar, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Afterglow (1997).

Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actress Winner

Marion Cotillard's first Oscar nomination.

Laura Linney as Wendy Savage in The Savages
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actress Nomination

Laura Linney's third nomination and the second in this category. Laura was nominated for her leading role in You Can Count on Me (2000) and her supporting role in Kinsey (2004).

Ellen Page as Juno MacGuff in Juno
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actress Nomination

Ellen Page's first Academy Award nomination.

Best Actor Academy Awards

George Clooney as Michael Clayton in Michael Clayton
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actor Nomination

George Clooney's fourth nomination and the first in this category. In 2005, he won an Oscar for his supporting role in Syriana, and was also nominated for writing and directing Good Night, and Good Luck.

Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actor Winner

This is his fourth nomination in this category. He won an Oscar for his performance in My Left Foot (1989) and was nominated for In the Name of the Father (1993) and Gangs of New York (2002).

Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd in Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actor Nomination

This is Johnny Depp's third nomination in this category. His other nominations were for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and Finding Neverland (2004).

Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Deerfield in In the Valley of Elah
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actor Nomination

Tommy Lee Jones' third nomination and the first in this category. He was nominated for his supporting roles in JFK (1991) and The Fugitive (1993), for which he won the Oscar.

Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai in Eastern Promises
80th Academy Awards - 2008 Oscar Best Actor Nomination

This is Viggo Mortensen's first Academy Award Oscar nomination.

Best Animated Feature

Persepolis, Ratatouille, Surf's Up

 

 

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