A romance starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, "(500) Days of Summer" understands that we mark our lives by our scrapes and defeats with love rather than by the white-wedding-cake successes.

Every so often a film comes along that defies and compels the imagination. “District 9” is a film with an actual idea in its head and the guile to manifest it on screen.

Oh, that Lars von Trier, what will he do to women next? If his new film “Antichrist” is any indication, it will be off-with-their-heads and all their erogenous zones, but slowly, painfully and with a very dull knife.

According to Roland Emmerich's latest blockbuster “2012,” Mayan mythology puts the end of the world a little more than two years from now.

With a deflated global economy forcing people everywhere to pinch pennies, the mood seems right for the return of the cheapest of the cheap, Ebenezer Scrooge, in Disney's big-budget holiday extravaganza, “A Christmas Carol.”

Love happens. But so do malodorous bodily functions. First time filmmaker Brandon Camp tries and fails to flout the genre's formula with his dud of a title, “Love Happens.”

Director Lu Chuan ("The Missing Gun," "Kekexili") is not a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, nor is he a troublemaker.

“I always feel particularly nervous at this time; I'm afraid that Han-sun will never come back.”

The “Saw” franchise has long over-exploited its most intelligent twists and trickeries, though the latest installment of the serial horror saga comes up with a new way to inflict suffering by introducing political relevance into the mix.

There's a whole lotta whiz-bang in “Astro Boy,” a slick CGI interpretation of the 1950s manga classic, but even Astro's shiny red rocket boots can't lift this conventional superhero story into orbit.