Theo James, Shailene Woodley, and Miles Teller in InsurgentINSURGENT

As was destined to happen at my well-attended-by-teenage-girls screening of Insurgent, I heard plenty of nervous titters when Shailene Woodley and Theo James finally unzipped their faux X-Men garb and got (PG-13) busy with one another, and solemn silence during most of the rest of this tear-stained, thematically pushy action adventure. But I did hear one other occasional sound, because nearly every time Miles Teller opened his mouth for a throwaway retort or vicious insult, the girls in my crowd laughed, and were completely right to. As Teller's Peter is an eternal thorn in our heroes' sides and a grade-A prick to boot - a character you'd presume more deserving of hisses than giggles - this was somewhat surprising. It was also hugely cheering. Those teen patrons may have collectively enjoyed the rampaging mediocrity of this Divergent sequel, but they also, just maybe, recognized true greatness when they saw it.

Theo James and Shailene Woodley in DivergentMarch 24, 10:30 a.m.-ish: After several days spent visiting friends in Ohio - among them, now, my hosts' adorable 17-month-old daughter - I return to my movie-reviewing duties filled with fresh perspective and hope for the future. Then I see Divergent, which earned $54.6 million over the weekend, and is already green-lit for two follow-up films. Well, the feeling was fun while it lasted.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Kit Harington in PompeiiPOMPEII

About a half-hour into Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii, the film's protagonist - a gladiator-turned-slave amusingly named Milo - hears the unfamiliar sound of the nearby Mount Vesuvius preparing to erupt. "It is the mountain," says Milo's comrade Atticus. "It grumbles from time to time." So do movie reviewers, and this latest 3D action spectacle by the director of Mortal Kombat, Death Race, and a trio of Resident Evil flicks would, at first glance, appear to be exactly the sort of thing I'd personally grumble about: a predictably corny, derivative, overscaled costume party with loads of generic violence and nothing in the way of subtlety or emotional nuance.

Yet while it's easy to name the movie's most direct influences, Gladiator and Titanic chief among them, what I didn't at all expect was for this swords-and-sandals outing to be so thoroughly, cheerfully indebted to 1970s disaster epics in the vein of The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure; Pompeii, to its cheeky credit, is kind of like 1974's Earthquake with the ancient Roman city cast in the role of Los Angeles.

Gattlin Griffith, Josh Brolin, and Kate Winslet in Labor DayLABOR DAY

Once upon a time, in the world of writer/director Jason Reitman, there was a magical kingdom called Labor Day.

Leslie Bibb, Justin Long, and Jason Sudeikis in Movie 43MOVIE 43

Ordinarily, Movie 43 would be the sort of unsatisfying, throwaway release that I'd dispense with in a paragraph, or maybe just a sentence or two. And it's not as though its opening-weekend box-office intake - a meager $5 million, despite the presence of nearly every star in Hollywood - necessitates longer consideration of the film. But this anthology comedy in the style of those '70s cult classics Kentucky Fried Movie and The Groove Tube seems to me a special case. How often, after all, do you get the chance to write about what might be your all-time least-enjoyable experience at the cineplex - including that time during the early '90s when you had to leave a screening for emergency root-canal surgery?

Jim Broadbent and Meryl Streep in The Iron LadyTHE IRON LADY

It's hardly a newsflash that over the past several years - well, forever, really - Meryl Streep has treated us to a run of extraordinary performances, and her Margaret Thatcher in the screen biography The Iron Lady is one of the most extraordinary of them all. Yet the vexing question regarding Streep's indelible work of late isn't "How does she keep doing it?" It's "How does she keep doing it with so little help from her directors?"

Jude Law in ContagionCONTAGION

I'm presuming, and hoping, that a bunch of you spent your weekend's cineplex allowances on Contagion, director Steven Soderbergh's bleak, elegant, deeply disturbing thriller about the planet's decimation by a new strain of flu-like virus. I'm also praying that none of you saw it while on a date, because I can barely imagine how awkward the drive home must've been. One cough or casual touch from your movie-going companion and you'd be frantically ransacking the car for hand sanitizer and a surgeon's mask.

OscarsSeriously, by the end of Hugh Jackman's opening number during the 2009 Academy Awards telecast, did it even matter if the rest of the show was any good?

Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerIf you're looking to win your workplace's annual Oscar pool, you'll likely do pretty well this year just by going with Slumdog Millionaire for nearly everything, by picking The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the tech awards Slumdog isn't nominated for, and by not making wild-card predictions in the gimme categories. Heath Ledger is winning Best Supporting Actor and WALL?E is winning Animated Feature. Just accept it. Don't try to be a hero.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary RoadREVOLUTIONARY ROAD

Set in 1955, Revolutionary Road finds Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet portraying Frank and April Wheeler, a young, affluent couple who realize they're miserable with their well-ordered lives in the suburbs - beautiful home, adorable kids, friendly neighbors - and it would be perfectly understandable if audiences watched the pair's suffering and listened to their frequent fits of rage and asked, "What's the freaking problem here?"

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