Rosario Dawson and Chris Rock in Top FiveTOP FIVE

Chris Rock is on-record as being a fan of Woody Allen movies and Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy, and the comedian's funny and thoughtful Top Five - Rock's first film as a writer/director since 2007's I Think I Love My Wife - is like a 100-minute blend of those influences. Then again, Allen, and certainly Linklater, would be much less likely to cap a scene with the image of a naked man getting a Tabasco-soaked tampon shoved up his ass.

MegamindMEGAMIND

Since Universal Pictures' fizzy, funny animated hit Despicable Me was released a mere four months ago, it's hardly possible that DreamWorks' new Megamind could be considered an intentional ripoff, despite a plot that also finds an über-villain gradually morphing into an über-hero. And despite the film's haughty, antagonistic protagonist performing his evil deeds alongside a goofy, tag-along minion. And despite this blobby little homunculus being named Minion. (Seriously, are there no fresh ideas in Hollywood?)

Toy Story 3TOY STORY 3

Sitting in the packed auditorium for a matinée screening of Toy Story 3, I was unsurprised to find that one of my fellow audience members was an infant who cried almost throughout the entire film. I would've been more irritated by the distraction if, for hefty chunks of the movie's opening and closing reels, I wasn't such a weepy infant myself.

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?

Rene Russo, Jason Alexander, Robert De Niro, Rocky, and Bullwinkle in The Adventures of Rocky & BullwinkleTHE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY & BULLWINKLE

One of the happier surprises of last summer was the release of South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, a marvelously written musical comedy that transcended its source material and shot off into a madcap animated universe all its own, raising the bar for all future TV-show-turned-feature-film projects. And while it would be great to report that the film version of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle approached South Park's level of cinematic exuberance, the filmmakers are facing an uphill battle: The animated series this one is based on is already such a whirligig of action, cliffhangers, and verbal and visual puns that raising the ante on it as a movie seems kinda pointless. (Clever and funny though it often is, the South Park TV series has nothing on the brilliance of the original R & B series.)