MIRROR MIRROR

Mirror Mirror is a slightly modernized, family-comedy version of the Snow White fairy tale, and offhand, I can think of few directors less suited to the material than this film's Tarsem Singh, the music-video veteran whose big-screen credits include those wildly baroque (and decidedly adult) spectacles The Cell and Immortals. Yet every once in a while, when a director is spectacularly wrong for a project, the results can be much more interesting than if he were right for it, and that certainly seems the case here; this aimless, pointless little trifle is mostly a drag, but I can only imagine how deadening it might've been without Singh at the helm.

HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART I

About two-thirds of the way through Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part I, Rupert Grint's Ron Weasley finally has it out with Emma Watson's Hermione Granger and Daniel Radcliffe's Harry. Fed up with the apparent hopelessness of their latest quest, and more than a bit peeved about his eternal status as Harry's second banana, Ron angrily asserts that the three wizards-in-training aren't finding anything and aren't getting anywhere, and eventually storms off in a huff. Never in my life have I felt so connected to Rupert Grint.

CLASH OF THE TITANS

For pure, unadulterated pop kitsch, it's hard to top 1981's Clash of the Titans, in which a blow-dried Harry Hamlin, as Perseus, waged war against the Greek gods while a glowering Laurence Olivier, as Zeus, gnashed his teeth from high atop Mount Olympus. And while I'm not suggesting that director Louis Leterrier's remake of this legendary swords-and-sandals extravaganza actually does top it, the not-so-guilty delight of his new version is that it stays remarkably faithful to the original's spirit; it, too, seems content merely to serve up a tasty helping of cinematic junk food - trash wrapped in cheese. With its blend of legitimately spectacular encounters and (I hope) intentionally retrograde visuals, this Clash of the Titans never pretends that it's anything other than a silly, instantly disposable good time, and consequently, can be easily enjoyed on its own, happily unpretentious terms.

DOUBT

Based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, writer/director John Patrick Shanley's period drama Doubt - set in 1964, and concerning a nun who suspects a priest of sexual misconduct with an altar boy - isn't much of a movie. Shanley's previous directorial effort was 1990's Joe Versus the Volcano, and it's a shame he wasn't able to get in more practice over the last 18 years; in an attempt to gussy up the visual blandness that accompanies most theatrical adaptations, Shanley opts for a series of high- and low-angle shots and symbolic thunder, lightning, and wind effects that oftentimes make Doubt resemble a satire of a low-budget horror flick. And it's still visually bland.