Experience a new dimension in action horror as director Paul W.S. Anderson uses the 3D technology pioneered by James Cameron and Vincent Pace to take movie lovers on a nightmare thrill-ride. It's been five years since the zombie virus swept across the globe, and Alice (Milla Jovovich) is still traveling... tirelessly in search of survivors. When the Umbrella Corporation ratchets up the stakes, an old friend turns up to lend Alice a helping hand. Rumor has it that some survivors have found sanctuary in Los Angeles, but when Alice and friends show up they find the city overrun with zombies, and quickly realize they've stumbled into a diabolical trap.

Two Hollywood heavy hitters team up for this Paramount Pictures release that finds director J.J. Abrams working with producer Steven Spielberg for the first time on a film that reportedly hearkens back to the early days of Spielberg's Amblin films.

The final chapter of the Harry Potter saga comes to the screen in this feature adaptation of the popular novel by children's fantasy author J.K. Rowling, with series veterans Steve Kloves and David Yates writing and directing, respectively. The Deathly Hallows will be split up into two films, with Part... 2 set for release six months later.

The Master Control Program is booted back up in this revamped Tron continuation that sees the return of original star Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, the brilliant computer programmer whose dissapearance leads to his son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), to search for him in and out of the computer world. Original... director and co-writer Steven Lisberger produces the new film, which is helmed by commercial director Joseph Kosinski. James Frain, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, and Michael Sheen also star, with Bruce Boxleitner returning as Alan Bradley and Tron, the heroic protagonist of the original film.

Animation, particularly when it comes out of the Disney/Pixar stable, is one of those areas of filmmaking that regularly inspires the phrase "They don't make them like they used to." In the case of Toy Story 3, however, it's more accurate to say, "They have never made them like this." It's certainly not unheard of for an animated film to be good, for a Pixar film to be great, or for the third film in a trilogy to be outstanding (though that's the rarest of the three), but in the case of Lee Unkrich's film, the sheer degree at which it exceeds at all three is not just rare, it's unprecedented.

Eleven years have elapsed since Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and all of Andy's favorite playthings had their last adventure -- rather, 11 years have elapsed since Andy stopped playing with his toys. Buoyed by Woody's never-failing devotion, the gang is all optimistic that Andy will elect to bring them with him to his first year of college, but as that fateful, empty-nest day approaches, it becomes clearer and clearer that the only toy that will be making the trek to school is Woody. The rest are all, by a series of unfortunate events, consigned to live out their remaining days at Sunnyside daycare. Things are actually looking up for the neglected entertainers until they realize just how careless the ankle-biters are when it comes to playing with toys.

Unfortunately, there is no escape in sight for the lovable personalities Pixar has been refining for over a decade. Lotso Huggin' Bear (Ned Beatty) runs a tight ship at Sunnyside; the new toys are just going to have to be sacrificed to the aggressive toddlers so the old veterans can have a relaxing time with their more mature counterparts. Eventually, Woody catches wind of what kind of life his old pals are being forced to live, and Toy Story 3 quite brilliantly becomes a riff on classic prison escape movies as Woody seeks to breach Lotso's security measures and bring his bunch back to Andy, where they belong. And while this on-the-run chunk of the film is some of the most thrilling material Pixar has ever delivered, it's also some of the most touching.

Unlike most sequels, not a moment of Toy Story 3 feels artificial. There's no sense that Pixar decided to make a third film because it knew that the box office would gladly support another entry; no sense that this is a cash grab (unlike a certain green ogre's most recent trip to the big screen). All of those typical sequel pitfalls are carefully avoided by a swelling sense of finality. Toy Story 3 isn't just another adventure with these characters -- there is, in fact, no doubt that this is their final adventure, their final hoorah together. Director Lee Unkrich and screenwriter Michael Arndt meticulously lead the audience along with bated breath the entire time, culminating in a life-or-death scenario for the toys that is more heartfelt and genuine than most live-action films can ever muster.

It's astonishing how the creative team at Pixar can make you forget that what you're watching is all a bunch of digital wizardry. Maybe it's the 3D this time around, maybe it's that this is the studio's most accomplished technical feat to date (there are single shots at a landfill that pack in richer detail than the entirety of the pioneering first film) that makes Toy Story 3 such an immersive experience. Or maybe it's simply because Pixar treats its property, which is ostensibly for children, with the utmost sincerity. The result is an overwhelming success, the rare kind of film that, were it a human being, would be your best friend.

One could reasonably make the case that Toy Story 3 is the single best animated film ever made. I wouldn't outright agree with such grandiose claims, but it's certainly not a baseless proposition that you'd be laughed at for bringing up. However, with part three now tucked under Pixar's belt, one could present an even better case that Toy Story is the best film trilogy ever made -- a claim I am far more comfortable signing on the dotted line for.

Twilight’s contentious “Edward vs. Jacob” debate was finally settled at the close of 2009‘s New Moon, the second episode of Stephenie Meyers’ supernatural teen harlequin saga, when plaintive emo hottie Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) definitively rejected the advances of Taylor Lautner’s musclebound man-wolf in favor of Robert Pattinson’s brooding vampire.

Or so we thought. Twilight’s fateful love triangle is revived in earnest by Eclipse, part three of the series, and this time the implications are serious -- relatively speaking, of course. Taking over the helm from New Moon director Chris Weitz is David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), who adds a hefty dose of action to Twilight’s trademark mix of soaring romance and manic melodrama, making Eclipse the first film in the saga in which -- get this -- something actually happens.

Indeed, action is a primary theme of Eclipse. Like most high school seniors, Bella wants some; her pasty paramour Edward Cullen, however, remains stubbornly chaste, and not just because the briefest exposure to his unbridled vampire lust would almost certainly kill his all-too-human sweetheart. You see, chivalrous Edward hails “from a different era,” one in which the institution of marriage meant everything and a man took care to mount a proper courtship before marrying a girl nearly a century his junior. (He’s 109 years old.) He asks her to marry him; she agrees, but only if he’ll turn her into a vampire first; he hesitates, pondering the unalterable consequences; the matter is tabled and heavy petting resumes. (This exchange is repeated, ad nauseam, throughout the remainder of the film.)

The constant fawning and unwavering devotion from impossibly beautiful Edward aren’t enough to sate Bella’s thirst -- she needs validation like a vampire needs blood -- and so she uses the flimsiest of pretexts to re-insert herself into the life of Jacob Black, the sensitive werewolf she previously shunned, who dutifully plies her with his own declarations of undying love. (Jacob, to his credit, has developed enough game since we last saw him to qualify as a serious contender for Bella’s affections, and is no longer the devoted doormat we saw in New Moon. He’s still a tool, though.) Game on.

But Edward and Jacob aren’t the only ones with designs on Bella. (Seriously, are there no other hot emo chicks in the greater Pacific Northwest?) A ginger-haired menace (Bryce Dallas Howard) has emerged, one that will require Edward’s vampire clan and Jacob’s wolfpack tribe, longtime enemies forever on the verge of a climactic battle (in which Bella will serve as the jeans-and-hoodie-clad Helen of Troy, no doubt) to put aside their differences and unite against a common enemy. In order to ensure Bella’s safety, Edward and Jacob must form an uneasy tag-team (no, not that kind of tag team, much as it would likely better serve to resolve matters) to keep Bella safe from harm.

With its amped-up action, sharpened wit, and darker, horror flick-inspired atmospherics, Eclipse boasts the broadest appeal of all the Twilight films thus far. But that doesn’t mean it’s good. Director Slade’s grasp of plot development borders on amateurish in this film; Eclipse often feels less like a movie than a weighty discourse on the pros and cons of vampiredom, laid out in lengthy, exhaustingly repetitive chunks of exposition and awkward, campy flashbacks, as just about every character in the film, including Edward, attempts to dissuade Bella from joining the ranks of the bloodsuckers.

But alas, no force, no matter how utterly rational its arguments, will keep Bella from her destiny. Which, obviously, is Edward. Or is it? Eclipse goes to great pains to invent ways to perpetuate the film’s romantic rivalry, inserting scenes like the one in which Bella, on the verge of freezing to death in a tent high up in the mountains, is saved when Jacob arrives to heroically spoon her body temperature back to its proper level. (Eclipse is being hyped as the first “guy-friendly” Twilight flick, but no film which includes a climactic spooning scene can rightly claim such a distinction.) Edward, meanwhile, with his poor vampire circulation, is powerless to help.

Who will win in the end? Will it be abs over eyes? Obviously, it will take two more movies (at least!) to solve this kind of wrenching dilemma.

By both critical and commercial measures, live-action anime adaptations boast a record of futility second perhaps only to videogame adaptations. Some essential aspect of the source material is irretrievably lost during the process of translating Japanese cartoon to Hollywood tentpole, something that even the most bloated visual effects budget can’t conceal. Think Dragonball Evolution and Speed Racer.

And yet, Hollywood keeps trying, lured by tantalizing visions of cash-cow franchises fed by loyal, built-in — and most importantly, international — audiences. The latest casualty of this misguided ambition is The Last Airbender, based on the hit Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. To be fair, Avatar isn’t anime in the orthodox sense, in that it was conceived and produced in the States, but its style and soul are almost exclusively anime-inspired. As such, its big-screen fate is similarly sealed.

Who could possibly break such a rueful trend? For some reason, the minds at Paramount thought M. Night Shyamalan, that notorious purveyor of ponderous and increasingly shlocky supernatural thrillers, might succeed where so many other directors had failed. Even worse, they saw fit to hire him to pen the screenplay as well, ensuring that every vital aspect of the film would feel the crushing weight of his heavy hand. With such a hacky burden to bear, it comes as no surprise that The Last Airbender never really takes flight.

The film's story is set in a world divided into four tribes, each aligned to an element: Air, Earth, Water, and Fire. Certain gifted tribe members, known as a “benders,” can manipulate the properties of their assigned element to suit their ends. In order to do so, they must first perform an elaborate and utterly ridiculous kung fu dance, after which a torrent of fire, water, or whatever arises to obey their command.

For the better part of a century, the oppressive and warlike Firebenders have besieged the other nations, gradually thinning their respective ranks. The Air Nomads have faired the worst of the lot, and are presumed to be extinct until Water peeps Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) discover a boy named Aang (Noah Ringer) trapped in a giant ball of ice. Not only is Unfrozen Kung Fu Warrior the last remaining Airbender (thus the title) he is also an Avatar, the only being on the planet capable of wielding all four elements. And only he can bring an end to the Firebenders’ evil reign.

Blessed with an opportunity to reinvent himself in a new genre and with a new demographic, Shyamalan can’t avoid falling back on old habits, most notably his penchant for awkward and cumbersome dialogue. It’s difficult enough for adults to deliver his lines, but it’s absolute hell for The Last Airbender’s youthful protagonists, whose not yet fully-developed temporal lobes can’t hope to adequately process the inanities of Shyamalan-speak. One can almost see the smoke coming from little Noah’s ears as he labors to complete each portentous sentence. Poor kid. Where are the Child Labor people when you need them?

But bad dialogue is only one of a litany of problems that plagues The Last Airbender, which suffers from mediocre CGI, inexplicable casting decisions (caucasians actors, none of whom are especially talented, are tabbed for asian roles when sufficiently mediocre race-appropriate actors were surely available), and a plot comprehensible only to the most ardent fans of the Nickelodeon series. Much as Aang bends the air, Shyamalan tries to bend the laws of quality cinema to his will, but they refuse to yield to the force of his ego. I only wish the execs at Paramount had been as stalwart.

As the Sundance, TriBeca, SXSW and Cannes Film Festivals wrap up in the first half of every year, a handful of films generate enough positive reviews that we in the entertainment news industry instinctively begin to discuss their respective Oscar prospects. It seems a bit silly – talking about award-worthy movies whilst the studios that produce and/or purchase them are simultaneously throwing their most expensive and often most odious fare at the multiplex. It’s also a futile practice, as even more high-quality motion pictures inevitably hit theaters in the months that follow, rendering many early hopefuls stale by comparison.

Despite loads of buzz and thumbs up from national critics, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right may suffer the aforementioned fate and end up being too little, too soon. The film, which centers on the dilemma that Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple living in California, face when the sperm donor who fathered their children enters their lives at their kids’ request, is enjoyable entertainment for adults and will be easy to digest for most audiences. My problem with the movie is that it was too easy to digest. With material that touches on a hot topic like gay marriage, I feel like I should’ve been questioned or challenged by the narrative. During press interviews, Cholodenko stated that her goal was to craft a personal tale about the strengths, weaknesses and ups and down of being a part of a family and avoid a sociopolitical connotation (she succeeds in this task), but I believe that she missed a golden opportunity to create an important dialogue about identity, marriage, fidelity and the state of homosexuality in America. Without debate, I just couldn’t get emotionally involved in the story.

That’s not to say that I couldn’t get involved in the characters. As Nic and Jules, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore bring caring warmth to their characters that only real-life Moms can. Though they both exhibit unappealing traits (Nic often knocks back one too many and is somewhat forceful with her kids, while Jules has a brush with heterosexuality that nearly ends their relationship) and are, in their own ways, selfish human beings, they mean well and represent an idyllic if alternative pair of parents. The teenagers, or rather the actors who play them, are actually more remarkable than the predicament that they find themselves in. Mia Wasikowska, well known to the masses as the star of Tim Burton’s billion dollar Alice In Wonderland, and Journey to The Center of The Earth’s Josh Hutcherson portray the titular Kids, Joni and Laser, with plenty of personality, but they also know how to convey a sense of vulnerability (that undoubtedly is the result of a fatherless upbringing) that defines them. They each have subplots that expand on their social shortcomings and provide more screen time, but ultimately take the story nowhere.

It’s Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the carefree restaurateur, unknowing father of two and catalyst of the film’s drama, who gets my sympathy. He goes from laid-back bachelor to likable new father to victim of circumstance in under two hours all because of his awkward attraction to Jules. The demonization of man didn’t sit right with me, especially because Paul’s feelings for Jules are not only reciprocated but multiplied by her own eagerness to engage in a risky affair with him. Paul pays the ultimate sacrifice by losing out on his relationship with the children he never knew while Jules gets little more than the silent treatment. He’s ostracized by women who have their own issues to work out and by teenagers who are too young to fully understand the complexity and reality of the situation. That’s what I call the short end of the stick.

The Kids Are All Right wraps up relatively neatly, rewarding moviegoers with a warm dramedy that doesn’t bite as hard as it should. There are plenty of elements in the story that could’ve been focused on in a more contemplative film – the consequences of one’s actions, the composition of the nuclear family in the new millennium, etc. – but instead it’s a personal tale of love falling apart and the act of forgiveness aiding its characters in putting it back together. I enjoyed the picture because of its well-written dialogue, unique brand of humor and down-to-earth performances, but feel that, like the Kids, it’s just All Right. With two critically adored actresses who have seven combined Academy Award nominations between them, the film will certainly attract an audience, but even with an Oscar ceremony that encompasses ten Best Picture nominees, I think it’s too early to tell if it will eventually strike gold.

Christopher Nolan has always been something of a mad-scientist filmmaker, mixing together seemingly incongruous elements from different genres to create dazzling concoctions like Memento, The Prestige, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. He continues his genre-splicing tradition with his ambitious new opus Inception, an engrossing head-trip that might be labeled an existential sci-fi heist flick. But that would be oversimplifying things.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, a professional thief who specializes in swiping not cars or diamonds or paintings but intellectual property. What sets Dom apart from the typical Chinese hacker, and what makes his services so appealing to his powerful corporate clients, is his expertise in “extraction,” a process whereby he utilizes a cutting-edge process known as “shared dreaming” to enter the mind of the mark while he or she is sleeping and steals information directly from their subconscious. (The nuts and bolts of “shared dreaming” technology aren’t ever explained, and only obliquely referred to as an innovation of the U.S. military.)

Dom is a reluctant criminal, a former academic forced underground after authorities unfairly pegged him for the murder of his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard). Weary of his itinerant fugitive lifestyle and longing to be reunited Stateside with his two young children, he agrees to take on a dangerous new assignment — his One Last Job, in heist film parlance — from an energy mogul named Saito (Ken Watanabe), who pledges to clear his name (in the movie world, fugitive suspects can be exonerated with a simple phone call from a CEO) if he can convince the heir of a rival energy conglomerate, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), to dissolve his ailing father’s empire after the old man passes on.

The danger of the new job lies in a key detail that distinguishes it from previous ones: Instead of extracting an idea from Fischer’s brain, Dom will need to implant one — a significantly riskier and more complicated process dubbed ... wait for it ... “inception.” To pull it off, Dom and his right-hand man, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), assemble a crew consisting of the best and brightest in the shared dreaming field.

As you might have gathered, Inception’s waking life/dreaming life construct is a complicated one, and fraught with all sorts of weighty existential implications. To make it all work, Nolan must devote the vast majority of the film’s dialogue to simply laying out the various rules and caveats: dreamers are given a cocktail of sedatives to maximize REM sleep; when they die in a dream, they awake in real life; if they don’t die, they can be awakened with a “kick,” which ranges in intensity from a classical music melody to a punch in the face; each dreamer carries a “totem,” a sort of personalized cogito ergo sum device to help them distinguish between reality and dream in times of doubt; and so on.

One of Nolan’s more admirable traits is that his films, no matter how fantastical they might get, are always anchored in a certain logic, with a premium placed on scientific accuracy. If this were an Ocean's movie, Soderbergh would have glossed over the above in a dizzyingly hip montage set to a swingin' Elvis dance remix. But for Nolan, the details are essential. Which might make great fodder for fanboy forums, but it leaves precious little room for other important narrative tasks, such as developing the supporting characters, who, unlike Inception’s subject matter, are uncomplicated and thinly drawn. (In perhaps a cheeky nod to this fact, Ellen Page’s character, the crew's rookie member, chooses a chess pawn as her totem.)

Inception’s avalanche of information (at one point juxtaposed with an actual avalanche, for irony’s sake) becomes so intense you almost expect the film to simply seize up, a giant spinning hourglass appearing on the frozen screen, as Nolan’s relentless download finally overwhelms our ability to process it all in real-time. Tasked with pondering both the dramatic and philosophical ramifications of every action, our grasp of the plot grows ever tenuous, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between events occurring in the past or present, between characters real and imagined, between heroes and villains.

If there are any villains. Saito and Fischer, the scheming corporate titans whose rivalry catalyzes Inception’s storyline, both gradually emerge as sympathetic characters. A simulacrum of Dom’s deceased wife pops up at inconvenient moments to sabotage his efforts, as do a phalanx of anonymous goons spawned by one character’s subconscious, but neither feel like genuine antagonists. As such, the film’s blistering climax loses much of its impact. The explosions and gun battles and zero-gravity fist-fights are all amazing, truly, but it’s unclear what the point is to all of them. Inception, though always riveting, isn't always comprehensible.

Non-traditional heroes have become a staple of animated films in recent years, supplanting anthropomorphic rodents and zoo animals as the protagonists du jour. Pubescent Vikings, crotchety old men, lonely robots, and giant green ogres may not be much of a draw in the live-action realm, but in the animated world, they’re freaking gold. You can add to those prestigious ranks Gru, the lead character in Despicable Me, a terrific 3D-animated flick directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud and based on a story by Sergio Pablos.

An enterprising arch-fiend with a yen for stealing prominent tourist landmarks like the Times Square jumbo-tron and the Statue of Liberty (the Vegas version), Gru (Steve Carell) thinks he’s at the top of his malevolent game, but his contented suburban existence is upended when he receives news that a youthful rival named Vector (Jason Segel) has managed to steal an entire Egyptian pyramid — a feat that renders his own audacious heists pedestrian in comparison.

His delicate villain ego badly bruised, Gru aspires to take back the spotlight by stealing the Moon, but before he can pull it off, Vector sabotages his efforts by swiping a device essential to Gru’s scheme, which triggers a duel of ever-escalating firepower reminiscent of the old Spy vs. Spy cartoons featured in Mad Magazine (with weapons straight out of the Acme design lab). Continually stymied by his ubernerd nemesis, Gru is about to give up when he uncovers a fatal weakness: Vector is absolutely mad for the cookies sold door-to-door by a trio of impossibly adorable orphan girls, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher). Eying the children as the key to infiltrating Vector’s lair and succeeding with his moon-stealing scheme, Gru agrees to adopt them. Little does he know, however, that they've unleashed on him a particularly virulent strain of cuteness that is already making its way toward his heart.

As the voice of Gru, Carell speaks with a husky, Russian-sounding (his true ethnicity is never revealed) accent that drips with exasperation and disdain for the naive simpletons that populate his idyllic suburban neighborhood. At first the idea of casting the Office star in the role seems counter-intuitive: Why go to the effort and expense of hiring one of the most popular comedy actors working today as the lead in your $100+ million (estimated) film, only to conceal him in a voice nearly unrecognizable to his millions of fans?

Shortly into Despicable Me, the answer becomes clear: because Coffin and Renaud, idealistic young fools that they are, hired Carell for his talent, and not for his star power. And it’s a good thing they did. The same incomparable pathos that turned incompetent corporate stooge Michael Scott into perhaps the best-loved sitcom character ever works its magic on Gru, making the story of his transformation from brooding misanthrope to dedicated father as emotionally engaging as it is funny.

A simple story, told exceptionally well: It’s the modus operandi for today’s successful animation studios, and it’s expertly carried out in Despicable Me. The plot thins out at certain points and at times borders on predictable, but its wit and warmth and vibrant animation (the film's colorful gothic aesthetic was inspired by artists Charles Addams and Edward Gorey) — rendered in actual 3D, not the fake variety so popular these days with audience-raping studio profiteers — carry it through those brief creative lulls.

Beneath the glossy sheen of Zac Efron there exists the makings of quite a fine actor, glimpses of which were seen in both the blockbuster comedy 17 Again and the indie drama Me and Orson Welles. His transition out of the Disney-fied teen-dream world and into more adult-oriented projects is a gradual, uneasy one, as is evidenced by his latest film, the metaphysical drama Charlie St. Cloud, which finds him perched squarely in between the two camps. Efron, it appears, is in that awkward stage.

In Charlie St. Cloud, Efron plays the title character, a carefree, college-bound sailing star whose bright future is torpedoed when an awful auto wreck takes the life of his beloved kid brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan). Charlie, at the wheel of the car at the time of the crash, briefly dies himself, only to be wrested from a flatline by a particularly stubborn and spiritual EMT (Ray Liotta).

Years later, Charlie’s body has made a full recovery, but his mind remains plagued by some nasty after-effects of the tragedy. He’s given up sailing, ditched his college plans, gotten a job at a cemetery, and taken up the habit of holding regular conversations with dead people — specifically his brother Sam, with whom he meets daily in a forest clearing to play catch. Usually, such mental deterioration coincides fairly closely with physical deterioration, which is why you don’t encounter a lot of well-groomed paranoid schizophrenics on skid row. But Charlie has kept up with his workout and grooming regimens, earning a reputation among the residents of his sleepy Pacific Northwest town as a sort of beautiful nutcase.

Unable to escape his all-consuming grief, Charlie seems doomed to retreat further into isolation and despair until salvation arrives, wrapped in a cardigan: Tess, (Amanda Crew), a feisty pro sailor and no stranger to tragedy herself, can see beyond Charlie’s unhinged persona to the sensitive, troubled, and irresistibly hot man that lies beneath. As their relationship deepens, Charlie is increasingly torn between his imaginary friends and his real-life love.

It’s a noble aim, giving tweens questions deeper than just “Edward or Jacob?” to contemplate, and Charlie St. Cloud’s principal message, “life is for living,” is a worthwhile one. But director Burr Steers, having learned from the success of 17 Again, clearly knows where his bread is buttered, and so he takes care to sate the demands of Efron’s screeching fanbase by stocking the film with ample glowing shots of his star, lovingly lit and clad invariably in a light blue, solid color shirt and emoting against a picturesque coastal landscape. (Lest you think I'm exaggerating, check out this studio-supplied promo clip, featuring an interview with a shirtless Efron.) The awkward mix of existential drama and Abercrombie & Fitch commercial, combined with a healthy dose of loopy, Sixth Sense-esque supernatural shenanigans tossed in toward the end, makes for an experience only the most fawning of Efron’s fans could enjoy.

Jay Baruchel is Hollywood’s affable geek du jour, having plied his unique trade recently in the animated blockbuster How to Train Your Dragon and the considerably less successful rom-com She’s Out of My League. His gangly frame, twitchy visage, and nasal drone make him perfect for movies in which awkward, self-effacing underdogs triumph against enormous odds to achieve great feats, like saving a Viking tribe from certain destruction or getting laid by a really, really hot blonde chick.

Movies like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a live-action CGI-fest directed by Jon Turteltaub (the National Treasure films) and inspired by a famous sequence from Fantasia, Walt Disney’s groundbreaking collection of animated shorts. Fantasia debuted in 1940, long before Disney subleased its animation work to Pixar and "Fantasia" became more commonly known as a popular name among exotic dancers. My, how things have changed.

Baruchel plays Dave, a hapless NYU physics nerd unwittingly cast into the middle of a centuries-long good-versus-evil battle between powerful sorcerers who wield an infinite array of supernatural powers. Representing the good guys is Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), a wide-eyed eccentric whose all-black goth-pimp ensemble draws nary a suspicious glance on the eclectic streets of Manhattan. Dave, it turns out, is no ordinary college student but the Prime Merliner, which sounds like an underwater number divisible by only one and itself, but in actuality is a sort of wizard messiah destined to rid the world from the likes of the sinister Horvath (Alfred Molina) and his imprisoned overlord, Morgana (Alice Krige). That is, if he can take time off from his bumbling courtship of a pretty co-ed (Teresa Palmer) to actually learn the tricks of the sorcerer’s trade.

“Disposable” and “formulaic” are terms commonly applied to both of Turteltaub’s National Treasure collaborations with Cage, but I submit that those films are at least fun, if ultimately forgettable. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is far less fun and far more forgettable, its formula followed so perfunctorily that it ultimately comes off as an elaborate exercise in corporate cynicism, one unlikely to inspire the string of sequels it so transparently hopes to conjure. Which is a shame, because the film shows intermittent signs of promise, and Cage, despite his distracting perm, is oddly charming as a sort of desperate weirdo.

Dinner for Schmucks is based on a French film, but don’t hold that against it. Its similarities to Le Diner de Cons, Francis Veber’s 1998 farce about a group of cynical publishing executives who host a weekly “dinner for idiots,” are primarily conceptual. To make it suitable for American audiences, director Jay Roach (of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents fame) and screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman safely cleansed their big-budget adaptation of any smoking, philandering, “mean-spiritedness,” or any other icky behavior that might make some of us Yanks uncomfortable. Whew.

Preeminent straight man Paul Rudd (Role Models, I Love You Man) plays Tim, an ambitious young investment banker on the verge of joining the elite ranks at his firm. But in order to be fully inducted into the executive inner circle, he must first participate in a peculiar ritual called the “Dinner for Winners,” a monthly event hosted by his boss, Lance (Bruce Greenwood), to which each attendee is charged with bringing a high-functioning dimwit for the rest of the guests to ridicule. More than just a company tradition, it’s an opportunity for high-climbers like Tim to prove their mettle in an area crucial to the success of stereotypically cutthroat businessmen: exhibiting callous disregard for those who exist on the fringes of society. Needless to say, attendance at the dinner is not optional.

Tim believes he’s found the ideal dinner guest when he literally runs into Barry (Steve Carell), a clumsy, bespectacled IRS employee whose great passion in life involves staging elaborate dioramas with taxidermic mice. Several of Barry’s exquisitely strange creations, dubbed “mouseterpieces,” are depicted in the film’s opening sequence, which proudly nods to the intricate quirk of Wes Anderson. (Its soundtrack even apes his musical tastes, playing an obscure song from a legendary rock band: the Beatles’ Fool on the Hill, a melancholy little number that cost a paltry $1.5 million to license.)

That’s where the comparisons to Anderson’s work end. As a director, Roach’s greatest asset has always been his ability to assemble a group of talented comic actors and hand them the reigns, trusting that they’ll produce enough funny material for him to sow together into a relatively cohesive piece. It’s what fueled Roach’s better works, like the first Austin Powers flick, and it’s ultimately what saves Dinner for Schmucks from falling victim to the director’s less admirable qualities, namely, a penchant for contrived and predictable situational humor, an over-reliance on cheap physical and sight gags, and a general disregard for plot and pacing.

Carell has carved a lucrative niche for himself playing charmingly oblivious goofballs of varying levels of competence, and he earns every dime of his reported $15 million paycheck in this film. Rudd’s character, for all his caustic wit, isn’t nearly as manipulative or amoral as his French counterpart; we never truly believe him capable of deliberately humiliating an innocent like Barry, even if he does drive a Porsche.

But they labor heroically to make the most of their suboptimal comedic circumstances, forming an amiable, intermittently hilarious odd-couple dynamic as Tim struggles to contain the chaos wrought by Barry. That, combined with the efforts of Jemaine Clement and Zach Galifianakis, both sublime in supporting roles, are what ultimately what elevate the film above its meagre material. These are guys who could send us into hysterics reading a grocery list, which in this case would constitute an upgrade over the Dinner for Schmucks screenplay.

Salt, the propulsive new thriller from Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games), has been dubbed “Bourne with boobs,” but that label isn’t entirely accurate. In the role of Evelyn Salt, a CIA staffer hunted by her own agency after a Russian defector fingers her in a plot to murder Russia’s president, Angelina Jolie keeps her two most potent weapons holstered, hidden under pantsuits and trenchcoats and the various other components of a super-spy wardrobe that proudly emphasizes function over flash.

But flash is one thing Salt never lacks for. Its breathless cat-and-mouse game hits full-throttle almost from the outset, when a former KGB officer named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) stumbles into a CIA interrogation room and begins spilling details of a vast conspiracy. Back in the ‘70s, hardline elements of the Soviet regime launched an ambitious new front in the Cold War, flooding the western world with orphans trained to infiltrate the security complexes of their adopted homelands and wait patiently — decades, if necessary — for the order to initiate a series of assassinations intended to trigger a devastating nuclear clash between the superpowers, from which the treacherous Reds would emerge triumphant.

The Soviet Union may have long ago collapsed (or did it? Hmmm...), but its army of brainwashed killer orphan spies remains in place, and if this crazy Orlov fellow is to be believed, they stand poised to reignite the Cold War. It’s a preposterous — even idiotic — scheme, but no more so than any of our government’s various harebrained proposals to kill Castro back in the ‘60s. As such, the CIA treats it with grave seriousness, even the part that that pegs Salt, who just happens to be a Russian-born orphan herself, as a key player in the conspiracy.

Salt bristles at the accusation, but, suspecting a set-up, she opts to flee rather than face interrogation from her bosses Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A former field agent, she’s been confined to a desk job since a clandestine operation in North Korea went south, leaving her with a nasty shiner and a rather unremarkable German boyfriend (now her unremarkable German husband). She’s clearly kept up her training during while cubicle-bound, however, and in a blaze of resourceful thinking and devastating Parkour Fu, she fends off a dozen or so agents of questionable competence and takes to the streets, where she sets about to clear her name and unravel the Commie orphan conspiracy before the authorities can catch up with her. That is, if she isn’t a part of the conspiracy.

The premise, which aims to resurrect Cold War tensions and graft them onto a modern-day spy thriller, is absurdly clever — and cleverly absurd. But Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay isn’t satisfied with the merely clever and absurd — it must be mind-blowing. Salt is one of those thrillers that ladles out its backstory slowly and in tiny portions, every once in a while dropping a revelatory bombshell that effectively blows the lid off everything that happened beforehand. No one is who they seem, and every action, every gesture, no matter how seemingly trivial, is imbued with some kind of grand significance. The effect of piling on one insane twist after another has the effect of gradually diluting the narrative. When anything is possible, nothing really matters.

But spy thrillers, by definition, trade in the preposterous, and the principal function of the summer blockbuster is to entertain. In that regard, Salt more than fulfills its charge. Noyce wisely keeps the story moving at pace that allows little time for asking uncomfortable questions or poking holes in the film’s frail plot. And he has an able partner in the infinitely versatile Jolie, who, having already exhibited formidable action-hero chops in Wanted and the Tomb Raider films, proves remarkably adept at the spy game as well.

It’s well-known that Jolie wasn’t the first choice to star in Salt, joining the project only after Tom Cruise dropped out, citing the story’s growing similarities to the Mission: Impossible films. But she’s more than just a capable replacement; she’s a welcome upgrade over Cruise, not least because she’s over a decade younger (and a few inches taller), than her predecessor. Should Brad Bird require a pinch-hitter for Ethan Hunt, he knows where to look.

Spooky hauntings are once again the main course in this Paramount Pictures follow-up to Oren Peli's wildly successful supernatural thriller, Paranormal Activity. Kip Williams directs from a script by Michael Perry.

A group of former government assassins fight back against the CIA after they're targeted for knowing too much in this adaptation of Warren Ellis' acclaimed Wildstorm comic series. Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) used to be a hired gun for the CIA. Along with Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich),... and Victoria (Helem Mirren), Frank's specialty was carrying out contracts that the government didn't want the public to know about. Fearing that Frank knows too much, the powers that be dispatch their top assassin to silence the retired triggerman. Set up to take the fall for a high profile assassination, Frank and his former team members realize that their only hope for clearing their names is to break into CIA headquarters and expose the truth. But once they're in, the group uncovers evidence of a massive cover-up that promises to rock the very foundation of our government. Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, and Ernest Borgnine co-star.