MOVIE REVIEWS

Where would Hollywood be without that old standby, the vampire-werewolf-schoolgirl love triangle?

It's been a big year for animation, with a great variety of styles represented by "Up," "Monsters vs. Aliens," "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and the upcoming "The Princess and the Frog."
The best you can say of the sci-fi comedy "Planet 51" is that like those others, it too is animated.

The redemption-minded sports flick "The Blind Side" serves its inspiration straight-up with no twist.

Cataclysmic disaster and apocalyptic doom, as foretold by Hollywood, have a way of bringing together broken families, revealing the unseen heroism of deadbeat dads and neatly disposing of their rivals.

Lionel Barrymore. Alastair Sim. Laurence Olivier. Albert Finney. George C. Scott. Bill Murray. Michael Caine. Mr. Magoo. Scrooge McDuck.

Cameron Diaz and James Marsden have a terrible moral dilemma in Richard Kelly's "The Box": Press a button on a mysterious container, they'll get $1 million, and someone they don't know will die.
What button, on whose box, did Kelly push to get the money to make this awful, preposterous thriller?

As Hollywood closed specialty divisions that aimed for quality and personal stories, as studios focus more and more on superhero sagas and action blockbusters, cinema fans have rightly wondered, who's left to make great American movies?

Watching "Michael Jackson's This Is It" will have fans grieving once again, but this time, it won't only be for the fallen King of Pop, but for what we lost – a brilliant entertainer who gave every inch of his body and soul for what might have been one of the most spectacular comebacks of all time.

The animated "Astro Boy" is a shiny hodgepodge of "Pinocchio," "WALL-E," "Oliver Twist," "Gladiator" and "Superman," with some obvious visual touches taken from "The Iron Giant." As its own entity, though, it's pretty forgettable.

It's getting downright batty trying to keep all these vampires straight.
You have your traditional vampires ("Nosferatu"), your blond slayer foils ("Buffy: The Vampire Slayer"), your sexy vamps ("True Blood"), your Euro children vampires ("Let the Right One In") and your melancholy teenage variety ("Twilight").