Movies

Where would Hollywood be without that old standby, the vampire-werewolf-schoolgirl love triangle?

The redemption-minded sports flick “The Blind Side” serves its inspiration straight-up with no twist.

As Hollywood closes specialty divisions that aimed for quality and personal stories, as studios focus more and more on superhero sagas and action blockbusters, cinema fans have rightly wondered, who’s left to make great American movies?

She's always been referred to as Sandra. So it’s a little disconcerting when she energetically introduces herself with, “Hi, I’m Sandy.” But energy was necessary for Sandra Bullock to portray Leigh Anne Tuohy in the new film “The  Blind Side."

It’s been a big year for animation, with a great variety of styles represented by “Up,” “Monsters vs. Aliens,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and the upcoming “The Princess and the Frog.”

The "Twilight" series may have changed the lives of fans worldwide, but perhaps no one has been more affected by its success than the three stars of the film: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner.

Describing how her character brutalizes her daughter in “Precious” and at one point endangers the life of her infant granddaughter, Mo’Nique says, “That was rough for me. But the moment the director says, ‘Cut,’ you leave it right on the floor.”

What do you want for Christmas?

LOS ANGELES – Technology finally has caught up with Charles Dickens’ imagination.

Cameron Diaz and James Marsden have a terrible moral dilemma in Richard Kelly’s “The Box”: Press a button on a mysterious container, they’ll get $1 million, and someone they don’t know will die.

Leaving aside for a few moments the technology behind Robert Zemeckis’ animated “A Christmas Carol,” this is the most satisfying version of Charles Dickens' oft-told tale in years.

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” pokes fun at the U.S. military for trying to create a team of psychic warriors, but you at least have to give the military credit for keeping an open mind.

“Gentlemen Broncos” is a comedy so weird, so off, so simply wrong that even freakish hero Napoleon Dynamite would have a hard time lending it his catch word, “Sweet.”

Low-rental 1980s horror returns with filmmaker Ti West’s “The House of the Devil,” which scores points for restraint and attention to detail but defaults when the mortgage comes due with a bloody, pointless, uninspired climax.

LOS ANGELES – Vampires have been an eternal force in Hollywood horror since silent-movie days, yet they have risen to new heights as the "Twilight" franchise, TV's "True Blood" and other incarnations put the bite on viewers.

Bela Lugosi is burned into most movie lovers’ brains as THE Dracula, but he’s hardly the only guy to portray the legendary bloodsucker. Christopher Lee played the Count seven times in the course of 15 years, Leslie Nielsen hammed it up in Mel Brooks’ vampire send-up, and John Carradine got to portray Dracula in a battle against, of all people, Billy the Kid. Ah, the ’60s ...

Considering the risks Amelia Earhart took, losing her life in the call of aviation, Hilary Swank and director Mira Nair don’t put much on the line in their film biography “Amelia.”

“Astro Boy” is one of those happy moviegoing surprises.

It’s getting downright batty trying to keep all these vampires straight.

The real mystery of "Law Abiding Citizen" isn't how Gerard Butler's character manages to wreak explosive, bloody havoc on Philadelphia while confined behind the walls of his jail cell.

The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.

Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” is only 10 sentences long and takes less than five minutes to read, if you don’t linger over the pictures.

NEW YORK – About the hoopla surrounding the film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are,” Maurice Sendak is characteristically gruff.

“A Serious Man”

"Coco Before Chanel"

In the 25 years since Joel and Ethan Coen broke cinematic ground with the very dark but oddly funny “Blood Simple,” journalists assigned to interview them have found that the brothers would much rather be making movies than talking about them. Questions were often answered with one or two words, followed by long silences.

"Couples Retreat" suggests what life might have been like if the guys from "Swingers" had grown up, moved to the suburbs and turned into lame, sitcommy cliches.