Two films stand out among the opening films this week: a documentary on the nuclear age, and a Korean war drama. This has been a really light summer for blockbusters, hasn't it?

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore -- I am not so crazy a cat lady I had to watch this. In fact, I made a point not to. But I've heard not-so-bad things about this kid film. Don saw it, want to know what he thought about it? Read his review. (wide)

Charlie St. Cloud -- Zac Efron vehicle about a young man who hangs out with his brother's ghost. OK. Well, maybe Debbie can explain it; read her review for more. (wide)

Countdown to Zero -- Doc about the history of the atomic bomb from origin to current affairs. I suspect this will be rather chilling, considering mutually assured destruction isn't so effective in the era of suicide bombers. (Arbor)

Dinner for Schmucks -- The irony is I had Francis Veber's 1998 comedy The Dinner Game in my Netflix queue, and immediately returned it back in April when I was attending a fest and had no time. Why? Because now I can't make any comparison to the remake starring Paul Rudd and Steve Carell with the more revealing title than the French original. We didn't review this, so do tell us how it turned out.

I'll confess that I'm a sucker for sentimental supernatural film and television. Despite its cheesiness, I'll watch Ghost and Ghost Whisperer anytime I come across them while surfing the television channels. I loved the plot twists of What Dreams May Come, The Others and The Sixth Sense, but give me a hanky for the tearful moments. It's the more profound question of the afterlife and redemption that I find mystifying and often comforting in my morose moments of recognition of mortality. Charlie St. Cloud attempts to extract similar sentimentality from its viewers. Based on Ben Sherwood's 2004 novel The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, this film directed by Burr Steers (17 Again) paints an ethereal portrait of loved ones amongst golden sunsets and raging storms.

Charlie (Zac Efron), is clearly a young man from the wrong side of the tracks. His mother (Kim Basinger) works double shifts to support him and his annoying and devoted brother Sam. Fortunately for Charlie, his good grades and sailing prowess have secured him a sailing scholarship at Stanford. On graduation day, the future couldn't be brighter for Charlie. He promises Sam that he'll play catch with him every day at sunset until Charlie leaves for school in the fall. However, a bad decision leaves both brothers dead in a car accident -- until Charlie is brought back to life by a dedicated paramedic (Ray Liotta).

Slackerwood editor Jette Kernion was very surprised when I offered to review Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. While I'm an open-minded film fan whose cinematic tastes include everything from local mumblecore to classic exploitation to the occasional Hollywood blockbuster, I'm not really into kid-oriented talking animal movies. And I'm totally not into watching kid-oriented movies in theaters full of, uh, actual kids. (I like kids, except when they're being disruptive during movies. Okay -- disruptive anywhere.)

But as I told Jette, sometimes a critic needs a challenge. It's easy to review a hipster-darling indie in which Catherine Keener frets about her life choices; it's far more difficult, however, to write insightful commentary about a film in which anthropomorphic dogs discuss butt sniffing. So, to test my critical skills -- and my patience -- I braved a preview screening of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, a sequel to 2001's Cats & Dogs with a few carryover characters.

I could have done without the theater full of restless, yammering young'uns. But I must admit the movie (opening today in wide release) surprised me, in that it isn't bad. Really, it's mostly good. You and your young'uns could do a lot worse at your local multiplex.

The Houston Film Commission annually presents a collection of recent Texas-made short films that they feel are truly excellent and frankly, want to show off to Texas as well as the rest of the world. Tonight, the commission's most recent collection screens here in Austin, thanks to Austin Film Festival, which selected it for the monthly Austin Film Festival Presents series. 

Three Austin films are included in the lineup: Mnemosyne Rising, the science-fiction short from Miguel Alvarez that played SXSW this year; Love Bug, Kat Candler's film about young love that won an audience award at AFF 2009; and Never Do This, a series of shorts from Scott Rice about, well, things you should never do. You might remember Rice's very funny Script Cops bumpers for AFF 2007. You also can see short films from San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth.

Tickets are available through Alamo Drafthouse at Lake Creek, or at the box office tonight before the screening. Admission is free if you're an AFF member, and a mere $4 for everyone else.

The Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival, which starts Thursday night, returns for its second year to spotlight films for a cause, and this year promises to be even more successful than last year's event. The number of cause-driven short film, videos, and PSAs jumped from last year's 140 to 235 entries in 2010. This festival has also expanded to a third day with new venues, including the Mexican American Culture Center, The Millenium Youth Center and Space 12.

LCH Film Festival attendees have the opportunity to see as many as 33 films and PSAs, and can also meet the filmmakers and representatives from the nonprofits involved. All proceeds from the festival go to the nonprofit associated with the winning film. Some of the diverse causes and topics spotlighted in thie year's films include public transportation, education, diseases, disaster relief in Peru and hunger in Texas.

One interesting theme I've noticed at the LCH Film Festival this year is bikes. Adventures For the Cure is about raising awareness and funds for diabetes as well as helping disabled children in Kenya through a 6,500-mile bicycle trek across the U.S. made by three young men, one of whom has Type I diabetes. Sweet Ride is a PSA focusing on the efforts of Transform to encourage San Francisco Bay Area residents to consider cycling as an alternate transportation option. Together We Can Make It focuses on the efforts of Bicycles for Humanity - Colorado to provide bicycles as distribution vehicles for improved healthcare to people too remote from formalized healthcare facilities in Namibia, Africa.  

Several Austin nonprofit organizations will be represented at LCH Film Festival this year:

Last month I started getting nostalgic for Fantastic Fests Past as I was de-cluttering and packing for a move. And while it is only July, fans of the festival are already getting excited for the 2010 edition, with two more months to go. If you're on Twitter or Facebook and live in Austin, you probably saw an explosion of tweets anticipating -- then commenting on -- the first round of films announced for the 6th annual Fantastic Fest last week. Seems like a perfect time to reminisce about the first five years of Fantastic Fest to me. Let's start at the logical place ... Year One, October 2005.

The inaugural year of Fantastic Fest was a sparse program compared to later years -- only four days long, and just two screens at a time for films and special events. There weren't distinct programs yet, other than a retrospective of post-apocalyptic films from around the world, starting a tradition of popular retrospectives that get some attendees as excited as the new releases. With a heavy representation of Asian horror, it's no surprise in later years that trend would continue.

Buying a VIP badge got you all sorts of goodies, mostly stuffed in a SXSW bag. We had the coolest badges ever in 2005, though -- these padded deals with a little flashlight in them, very helpful for reading the black with tiny white font programs.

Here's the most up-to-date Austin film news for you today:

• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane screened at Comic-Con in San Diego last week. The indie horror film was shot in Austin and Bastrop in 2005 or 2006, and played SXSW in 2007. It stars Amber Heard but the cast also includes Robert Earl Keen. Due to what we'll call Issues With the Distributors, the film never received theatrical release, and the only DVDs you can buy of it are in foreign countries. However, this may be changing soon: Producer Keith Calder posted on Twitter this weekend that "I now see a light at the end of the tunnel for Mandy." I assume he doesn't mean the Barry Manilow song. We'll let you know more tangible news about this film when we hear it. (Thanks to Scott Weinberg for the heads-up.)
• Also at Comic-Con: Machete cast and crew, showing previews and serving tacos. Robert Rodriguez, Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriguez appeared at a big Machete party where they worked a taco truck all dolled up for the occasion. Over at Cinematical, Jen Yamato posted a gallery of photos from the evening.
• You now have several chances to see the restored version of The Red Shoes in local theaters next month. You may already know that the Paramount will be showing the film on August 14 and 15 -- I actually have those days on my personal calendar so I won't miss it. But if you want a more glamourous evening for a good cause, Ballet Austin is having a fundraiser screening of the film on Thursday, August 5 at Alamo South Lamar. Admission includes a five-course meal (where nearly everything is a shade of red) with wine pairings. Personally, I'm torn -- I suspect the movie will look better on Alamo's 4K digital screen but I don't want to be distracted by food while watching it.

It hasn't been a great summer this year for big summer blockbusters, but if you look closely, it's been a great simmering summer for the arthhouse films, at least in Austin. Exit Through the Gift Shop is still holding on at the Dobie, and The Secret in Their Eyes is back. Micmacs is still doing well at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, and the Grease Sing-A-Long has five new screenings peppered into the South Lamar schedule through Wednesday. Here's what's opening this week:

The Kids are All Right -- This tale of an "alternative" family is too self-aware and overloaded with self-concious acting in the first half, despite having some of the best actors available today. Still, by the end it's the kids that won me over. Elizabeth can tell you more in her review. (wide)

Salt -- Angelina Jolie as a spy fighting to clear her name after a defector accuses her of treason. The heavily marketed film also includes acting heavyweights Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Andre Braugher, which makes this potentially one of the more watchable films of the summer. But two questions remain; is Evelyn Salt a double agent, and is Salt really watchable? Elizabeth's review can answer one of those questions. (wide)

The Secret in Their Eyes -- This brilliant, complex, Oscar-winning thriller returns to Austin. If you love nuanced performances wrapped in layered stories, this is a must-see. Read Don's review for more. Then go see it. (Dobie)

I was expecting Salt to be like a female version of the Bourne films, and it is as engaging as the best of that series. But unlike Jason Bourne, with Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie), we're never quite sure what her agenda is -- although we're still quite eager to follow her on her escapades.

The movie starts off with our heroine/anti-heroine being traded for another spy (sounds familiar, right?) after she was captured in North Korea and her German arachnologist boyfriend Mike (August Diehl) worked for her release (unaware at this point that she works for the CIA). Two years later, Mike and Evelyn are living in Washington, DC, married, and about to celebrate their anniversary when Salt is asked to interview a Russian spy who has turned himself in to the CIA.

This spy, Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), spins a tale about a Russian program in the 1970s that indoctrinated children and raised them to speak English as well as Russian ... and he tells of a certain double-agent brought up in the program who will soon kill the Russian president: Evelyn Salt. Salt starts fretting that her CIA partner Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) and counter-intelligence agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) will believe Orlov and so she escapes. Thus the action begins!

Last Wednesday evening, I attended a packed screening of The Kids Are All Right at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar; the theater was so full that even though I was there early my friend and I had to sit in folding chairs. I was hungry, but felt too unsettled to order anything (and since I wasn't near a table, I couldn't imagine how I would eat and take notes at the same time). Then the movie started, and I forgot my own problems and got caught up in the story of the family in the film.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a married Californian couple with two teenage kids: recent high school graduate Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and 15-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson). The kids love their moms, but since Joni is 18, Laser asks her to find out about their sperm donor. Thus, Mark Ruffalo enters the picture as Paul, a organic/local restauranteur (his place is called WYSIWYG, get it?) in his early forties and their biological father.

Paul becomes involved with both the kids and their moms in varying ways. Jules and Joni bloom under his attentions, and even Laser takes his advice (finally) regarding his doofus friend Clay (Eddie Hassell), the kind of guy who would want to pee on a dog's head. Yes, this film goes there! Well, almost.