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In hard economic times, people seek escape at the movies. Full story »

Not being a teenage girl, I feel somewhat unqualified to review "Twilight," the breathlessly anticipated film version of the first in the series of romantic vampire novels by Stephenie Meyer that has become a sensation among the post-Miley Cyrus, presorority rush set. If I were a teenage girl, my review might consist of one emphatic word: SHRIEK. That was the favored response to the film at a Tuesday night preview screening at the Malco Paradiso. Full story »

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"Lassie Come Home" for kids raised on superhero movies and "Hannah Montana," "Bolt" is a funny, charming and thoroughly family-friendly computer-animated tale of canine/human loyalty and companionship that marks an auspicious first feature for new Walt Disney Animation Studios chief John Lasseter, who also heads the now Disney-owned Pixar. Full story »

Despite its three Academy Award nominations, writer-director Mike Leigh's previous feature, "Vera Drake" (2004), is almost criminally underappreciated. The movie is not just as good as anything Leigh has made in his 37-year career; it's as worthwhile as any English-language film of the past decade. "Happy-Go-Lucky" continues Leigh's winning streak. Full story »

"I hated that movie, but I loved it," the weeping woman behind me said after a preview screening of "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," a film that cynically might be described as the inspirational feel-bad Holocaust hit of the holiday season. Nondocumentary Holocaust movies ("Life Is Beautiful" being one of the most celebrated and infamous) tend to divide audiences and critics -- and sometimes individuals, like the woman quoted above. Full story »

In "What Just Happened," an airless, humorless, "insider's" satire of Hollywood, Robert De Niro plays a veteran movie producer named Ben who is trying to cope with his divorce from his wife and with Bruce Willis' refusal to shave his Grizzly Adams beard for his new action-hero role. It's a measure of the movie's surprising miscalculation that director Barry Levinson and writer Art Linson devote as much time to the producer's familiar and tedious domestic woes as to his hair war with Willis. Full story »

Apparently, I was about the only person in the world who wasn't wild about "Casino Royale," the 2007 back-to-basics reboot -- and international smash hit -- that introduced Daniel Craig as a tough and relatively realistic James Bond for the post-9/11 world of cold-blooded counterintelligence. ("I miss the Cold War," mused Judi Dench's M in that film.) Full story »

The bittersweet melancholy and slippery unreliability of memory -- particularly the memory of unrequited, abbreviated or idealized love -- is a persistent theme in the work of Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai. And yet, cinema is a way of, essentially, freezing memory: The images and sounds captured on film last forever, or at least as long as the film itself. Full story »

The tagline used to sell "Jaws 2" back in 1978 was: "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...." Now here comes the much scarier "Flow: For Love of Water," a documentary that could be advertised with this slogan: "Just when you thought it was safe to drink the water...." Or even: "Just when you thought water was safe, period." Full story »

A PG-13-style inspirational comedy/drama struggles to escape from the crude R-rated sexual humor and nonstop profanity of “Soul Men,” a flawed salute to the legacy of Stax that now, sadly, also represents a tribute to the memory of two of its stars, Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. Mac and Samuel L. Jackson are perfectly cast as Floyd and Louis, former Stax recording artists whose careers as members of soul ensemble “The Real Deal” hit the skids after their egomaniacal lead singer, Marcus Hooks (John Legend), split for solo fame. Full story »

Partly set and shot in Memphis, the road-trip comedy "Soul Men," in which Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac play a pair of (fictional) veteran Stax recording artists, opens in theaters in Memphis and across the nation Friday. Directed by Malcolm D. Lee, the R-rated movie, which includes scenes shot on Beale Street, inside The Peabody and outside the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, also features appearances by the late Isaac Hayes. Full story »

Capsule descriptions by The Commercial Appeal movie writer John Beifuss. Full story »

Anne Hathaway does not play the title character in "Rachel Getting Married," but she commands this ostensible ensemble film as surely as Boris Karloff's nameless monster dominated "Frankenstein." At times, she's just as scary. It's no coincidence that Hathaway's character, Kym, a former junkie and fashion model, arrives at her pregnant sister's wedding "nine months clean," a gestation period that has given birth to -- what? Full story »

Morgan Jon Fox's latest feature, the obliquely titled "omg/HaHaHa," was jokingly dubbed "the 'Titanic' of Indie Memphis" after it earned a record five awards this month at the Indie Memphis Film Festival. Full story »