ORPHAN

Director Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan features that most indestructible and, oftentimes, luridly enjoyable of horror-flick staples - the psychopathic prepubescent - and would probably be a lot of fun if it wasn't so relentlessly unpleasant and stupid. Those of us who've been known to get a kick out of these Omen-esque outings will probably give the movie the benefit of the doubt for far longer than it deserves. But for all of its effective jolts and expert acting, Orphan is so frustratingly illogical that it trashes whatever goodwill you extend toward it, and the experience is too unremittingly dour and punishing to be any kind of not-so-guilty pleasure. (One of the friends I saw the film with left the auditorium saying, "I need a shower now." Get in line, pal.)

BRÜNO

Returning with a comedy in a vein similar, re-e-e-eally similar, to that of their 2006 smash Borat, director Larry Charles and co-writer/star Sacha Baron Cohen now present us with Brüno, another mock-doc based on one of Cohen's famed Da Ali G Show characters. With a storyline that you can easily summarize in three words - Borat gone gay - it's the pair's latest attempt to shock the masses into spasms of outrage and gales of uncontrollable laughter, and I'll readily admit that the movie is pretty funny, and sometimes awfully funny.

PUBLIC ENEMIES

With a low-key yet intensely charismatic Johnny Depp as its lead, you could describe Michael Mann's Public Enemies as the story behind the criminal activity of the infamous, Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger. But that's not entirely accurate. The film is also about the nascent, frequently misguided authority of the FBI, personified here by a stalwart agent (a somber, less-throaty-than-usual Christian Bale) and showboating chief J. Edgar Hoover (a spectacular Billy Crudup). It's also about early media saturation in our country, and the public's complicity in turning villains into heroes, and the labyrinthine hierarchies among American gangsters, and - as embodied by a dazzlingly desirable and powerful Marion Cotillard - the ever-unpredictable nature of love. And, more than anything, it's about the exquisite craftsmanship of Michael Mann, whose Public Enemies doesn't look or sound quite like any other crime movie you've seen, and whose technical virtuosity might make Public Enemies impossible to forget.

THE PROPOSAL

"All right, you've got five minutes to sell me your pitch. Go."

"Well, it's a romantic comedy - I'm thinking about calling it The Proposal - and it's about this bitchy, selfish book editor in Manhattan who learns deeper values and becomes a better person after falling in love with her assistant."

"That doesn't sound very funny."