Johnny Depp in Alice in WonderlandALICE IN WONDERLAND

Beginning with 2001's Planet of the Apes remake, Tim Burton has cast domestic partner Helena Bonham Carter in all six of his most recent feature films, and he's never made better use of her beguiling, somewhat perverse charisma than in his new take on Alice in Wonderland.

Matt Damon, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt in Ocean's 13OCEAN'S THIRTEEN

Memories of the meandering, tiresome, and ceaselessly smug Ocean's Twelve - Steven Soderbergh's first sequel to his 2001 heist flick Ocean's Eleven - were enough to make me leery about Ocean's Thirteen, and during the film's first reel, that feeling rarely subsided; it, too, seemed both simplistic and maddeningly convoluted, and inordinately pleased with itself from the get-go.

Morris Chestnut, D.L. Hughley, Bill Bellamy, and Shemar Moore in The BrothersTHE BROTHERS

The Brothers, the comedy-drama debut from writer-director Gary Hardwick, is a good-and-bad movie in which the good parts far surpass the bad, and that alone makes it one of the finer movies of the year.