Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1

We're now four films into the five-part series of Stephenie Meyer adaptations, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is the first one that I wouldn't hesitate to call unpredictable. As someone who couldn't care less about the tortured love triangle involving the human Bella (Kristen Stewart), the vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson), and the lycanthrope Jacob (Taylor Lautner), I was confident that this moody romance would perk up with an added dash of Rosemary's Baby, once the now-married Bella found herself pregnant with Edward's child. (So the undead have living sperm, then?) But how could I have guessed this would be the exact moment that, at least for me, the movie stopped being interesting?

Aaron Eckhart in Battle: Los AngelesBATTLE: LOS ANGELES

My number-one, hands-down, love-it-to-death favorite scene in the science-fiction action spectacle Battle: Los Angeles occurs roughly 40 minutes into the film. Hundreds of meteors have fallen to earth in urban centers around the globe, and are revealed to be teeming with aliens, who waste no time in annihilating everything and everyone in their paths. After engaging in long sequences of L.A.-based retaliation, a stalwart band of Marines is helicoptered into Santa Monica to fend off one of these attacks, and a frightened lieutenant ducks into in an apartment complex's laundry room, where he watches the horrific destruction through a window. Suddenly hearing a noise behind him, the man whips around, expecting to come face-to-face with one of the monstrous invaders from another world. Yet instead of terror, the lieutenant's face quickly registers relief, as the sound he heard was just that of the washing machine's spin cycle.

You know what that means, right? That in the midst of this apocalyptic showdown that, as we've witnessed on TV newscasts, has been going on for several hours now, someone in that apartment complex decided it was a good time to throw in a load of laundry.

Dianna Agron and Alex Pettyfer in I Am Number FourI AM NUMBER FOUR

A handsome, troubled, rebellious transfer student dealing with alienation and the wrath of bullies at his new high school. The kid's ineffectual father, shrugging off his child's loneliness and conflicts with the authorities. The kid's one new friend, a withdrawn, frequently picked-on nerd with his own parental hang-ups. The kid's potential love interest, a pretty, popular girl who feels like an outsider herself, and appears to be the property of the kid's chief tormentor. If you've seen a certain iconic drama starring Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and a red-jacket-wearing James Dean, the aforementioned character descriptions might sound a teensy bit familiar.

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

At roughly the halfway point in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - the third of four books (and eventually five movies) in author Stephenie Meyer's frighteningly popular series - we're given a flashback that details the vampiristic recruitment of Rosalie (Nikki Reed), a character constricted to the sidelines in previous Twilight installments. Set in what looks to be 1920s or '30s America, the brief sequence finds this pretty blond-turned-bloodsucker exacting revenge on her hateful fiancé while sporting a wedding gown and a nightmarish grin, and it's a total kick; several scenes later, another enjoyable flashback shows us how the similarly undeveloped figure of Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) joined the ranks of the undead while performing a heroic service during the Civil War.

Matt Damon in Green ZoneGREEN ZONE

 

Set in Baghdad during the early months of 2002, director Paul Greengrass' action thriller Green Zone casts Matt Damon as a stalwart, driven military officer who gradually discovers that the American government lied about the proliferation - even the existence - of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This might strike you as old news, and it is. The disappointing surprise of Green Zone, though, is that the movie itself should feel like such old news, and in ways that have nothing to do with Greengrass and Damon re-teaming after the considerable artistic and popular successes of their Bourne Supermacy and Bourne Ultimatum films.

Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried in Dear JohnDEAR JOHN

Since no one's been pressing a gun to my head, I haven't read Nicholas Sparks' Dear John, which concerns a pair of star-crossed lovers whose romance is derailed by the young man's Army tenure. I have, however, seen director Lasse Hallström's screen version, which apparently follows the novel's blueprint faithfully (albeit with an altered ending), so permit me a question: Does Sparks have absolutely no shame?

Ethan Hawke in DaybreakersDAYBREAKERS

There are probably perfectly valid reasons that I'm unaware of, but for all the wonders that CGI effects have delivered over the years, why is it so hard to produce a decent fireball?

Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart, and Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga: New MoonTHE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON

Like last November's film version of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, this November's follow-up, the helpfully titled The Twilight Saga: New Moon, is a mostly dour affair, a vampire tale less concerned with blood-letting than with the pain of teenage heartache, romantic longing, chastity, and maudlin acoustic ballads. That's why, despite some occasional levity, it's a shock to find director Chris Weitz's movie boasting not one but two absolutely outstanding jokes.

Michael Jackson's This Is ItMICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT

For a film that seemed to have "commercial exploitation" written all over it, Michael Jackson's This Is It is an intensely loving and even indispensable piece of work -- a joyous celebration of performance drive, hard work, and a fearsome amount of skill. Culled from roughly 100 hours of rehearsal footage from the late star's planned concert tour, director Kenny Oretga's behind-the-scenes account doesn't offer much in the way of insight, nor is it meant to. Yet it's still a first-rate spectacle that, at times, provides an almost ridiculous amount of pleasure; somehow, miraculously, Ortega and his editors have shaped their footage into a documentary that boasts the kineticism, excitement, and boundless ebullience of a kick-ass movie musical.

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