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While twentysomething angst is a common theme in indie films, the gritty and violent Bellflower is a unique take on the trials of young adulthood. A flawed but intriguing movie about the post-apocalyptic fantasies of disaffected young men, Bellflower is strong on concept, vision and visuals, if less so in its story and acting.

Writer/director Evan Glodell stars as Woodrow, an aimless Southern California twentysomething who spends his copious amounts of free time fantasizing about vague notions of global destruction. He and his equally aimless buddy Aiden (Tyler Dawson) build a crude but effective arsenal of flamethrowers and other weapons, hoping that post-apocalyptic chaos will allow their would-be gang, Mother Medusa, to rule the day in a spree of incendiary violence.

Waiting for worldwide mayhem, of course, means a lot of waiting. In the meantime, Woodrow meets and falls hard for free-spirited Milly (Jessie Wiseman); in one of many unlikely Bellflower elements, their first date consists of a drunken road trip to Texas in a customized Volvo with a liquor tap on the dashboard. The couple's ensuing relationship is predictably rocky, causing emotional mayhem far more devastating than any of Woodrow's destructive fantasies.

Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help has been discussed in many book groups since it was published in 2009. Given some of the controversy the book has stirred up, I went into the film adaptation of the novel with some trepidation. I needn't have worried. In the hands of the expert actresses involved, aided by a touching screenplay and dedicated direction from actor/writer/director Tate Taylor, The Help is one of the best movies I've seen this year.

I won't go into much detail about any way the film differs from the book, because I only remembered main plot points and the strong female characters involved in the novel. Although the book is told from three different viewpoints, the movie The Help is narrated by maid Aibileen (Viola Davis). Aibileen works as a nanny/maid to a middle-class family in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. She loves her charge Mae Mobley fiercely, but knows that she can only do so much to make up for the lack of love the girl receives from her mother Elizabeth (Ahna O'Reilly). She lives alone in a small home where a photo of her son holds a place of prominence.

Aibileen's best friend Minny (Octavia Spencer) used to work for dotty Missus Walters (Sissy Spacek), but now suffers under her tyrannical daughter Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) ... until Hilly fires Minny for using the house toilet (instead of her own "special" Jim Crow toilet outside). Minny is down and out until nouveau riche Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain) hires her.

"An overworked lawyer and his best friend have grown apart. When they switch bodies, each is forced to adapt to the others life for one freaky Friday."

Actually, the characters played by Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds in The Change-Up spend weeks trying to undo the personality swap wrought by the mysterious (and vengeful) fountain in which they drunkenly pee together after a night of boozing and sports. Each is dissatisfied and envies the other's life, so they both make an ironic wish that the lady of the fountain is too happy to grant.

There's little to say about this comedy from The Hangover writers Scott Moore and Jon Lucas and Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin. The script lives up to neither of those hits and feels like it was peppered with jokes rejected from both, perhaps written in the spare time the pair had between weekends photocopying the script from The Hangover to make The Hangover Part II. Fortunately, the majority of the excessive poo-humor is confined to the first few minutes, and then The Change-Up settles into generic movie territory.

Reynolds' Mitch Planko settles into life as Bateman's Dave Lockwood, and vice-versa. While fumbling his way through pretending to be a high-stakes corporate lawyer, Mitch manages to jeopardize the deal of Dave's career. Dave, meanwhile suffers through an "acting" gig that goes where no man should ever go. Most of the screen time is spent on Bateman, as Mitch inside Dave's body (confusing, right?) though Reynolds as Dave-inside-Mitch gets to live out his fantasies concerning his assistant Sabrina (Olivia Wilde). There is also a small subplot involving Mitch's estranged father (Alan Arkin). Naturally, they can't switch back until each learns the grass isn't greener on the other side, track down the missing fountain, and mictorate in public. But all's well that end's well, et cetera.

The summer's best alien movie does not involve Harrison Ford or J.J. Abrams, but rather a first-time feature director, Joe Cornish, who's written a story that I've heard described as "Gremlins meets Harry Brown." Ridiculous, but you get the general idea. Attack the Block, produced by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) first hit Austin during SXSW, where it won the Audience Award in the Midnighters category, and the buzz was deafening. I missed the movie at the fest but found it well worth the wait.

In the area surrounding a South London housing project, Sam (Jodie Whittaker) is walking back home from work after dark and is mugged by a gang of young men. The mugging is interrupted by a strange creature thudding onto the roof of the car; gang leader Moses (John Boyega) automatically attacks the creature, kills it, and decides it's valuable. It turns out that it is, in a way -- suddenly more aliens are alighting from the sky, heading for their London neighborhood, and targeting the block of flats where Moses and his gang -- and Sam -- all live. And you should see the teeth on these creatures.

As much as I hate the term "chick flick," it has come to define a certain type of film I tend to guiltily enjoy watching -- a movie where women play a large role and a romance is likely to be in the works. That being said, although Crazy, Stupid, Love. is all about romance (budding, broken, and unrequited), this ain't no chick flick. It doesn't really count as a "bromance" either, but it does focus on men and how they relate to each other and the women in this film. Let's just call it a genre-defying romantic comedy, if that makes any sense.

There are multiple characters and relationships depicted in Crazy, Stupid, Love. The main interaction is between accountant Cal (Steve Carell), who finds out in the opening scene that his wife wants a divorce, and hunky younger womanizer Jacob (Ryan Gosling). Cal is broken-hearted after separating from his high-school sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore); Jacob pities him and takes him under his wing. Carell and Gosling are terrific in their scenes together.

Take scrappy Wild West folk and pit them against interstellar aggressors, and what should you get? With Jon Favreau directing, you might expect something smart, fast-paced and fun. After all, Favreau's Elf endeared Will Farrell to audiences who had no appreciation for the man -- no small feat -- and Iron Man and Iron Man 2 were both satisfying summer blockbusters. Unfortunately, Cowboys & Aliens has more in common with Snakes on a Plane than with Iron Man.

The concept of "cowboys versus aliens" couldn't be simpler, but the movie plods along with too many subplots. Understandably, archetypal western characters abound. Daniel Craig's broody, silent stranger upsets the uneasy peace of a dirtwater town run by a dictatorial cattle baron, Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). Townspeople like saloonkeeper Doc (Sam Rockwell) suffer the patronage of Dolarhyde's spoiled, mercurial son (Paul Dano), thanks in part to worshipful ranch hand Nat Colorado (Adam Beach). The dutiful, tolerant sheriff (Keith Carradine) cares for his orphaned grandson Emmett (Noah Ringer). Gingham clad gun-toting Ella (Olivia Wilde) slouches along in the background and says even less than the preacher (Clancy Brown). After alien raiders strafe the town and steal away many townsfolk, a tenuous alliance forms to recover loved ones.

Perhaps Iron Man made me expect too much from superhero movies. That Marvel film combines a great storyline and thoughtful acting along with the requisite blow-'em-up special effects. While Captain America: The First Avenger is a fun summer movie, it's far less cohesive than that related film, and far less memorable as well.

First off, I'll admit that I'm not very familiar with the Captain America canon. I happened upon this primer on NPR's Monkey See blog the day I saw the film, so I knew a little of what to expect, but there were still some surprises thrown in!

Captain America: The First Avenger is mainly an origin story of how Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) comes to be Captain America, WWII propaganda figure and hero of the Allied armed forces. Rogers begins the film a 98-pound small-statured man who keeps trying to enlist, but is continually denied because of his size and health conditions. His pal Bucky (Sebastian Stan in a vanilla performance) takes him along to a "World Expo," where we first see Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper, quite believable as Iron Man's dad).

On Wednesday night, I missed a Captain America screening to instead enjoy this year's best date movie, at least since No Strings Attached (my review). Actually, Friends with Benefits is much better than the Ashton Kutcher/Natalie Portman rom-com, with a funnier script and more believable chemistry between stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Riding a similar plot vehicle, Timberlake and Kunis catapult lines of dialogue each other in the comfortable banter of best friends, a stride into which Kutcher/Portman could never quite settle.

Jamie (Kunis) is a recruiter/headhunter who attempts to woo hotshot graphic artist Dylan (Timberlake) from his LA blog to a position at GQ. After a whirlwind tour of non-touristy NYC culminating in a Times Square flash mob, he agrees to take the job. With Jamie as Dylan's only New York friend, and an immediate chemistry, they begin to spend all their free time together. While drunkenly relating accounts of their most recent exes, they decide to experiment with having sex while keeping it in a box, free of emotional demands and attachments. The result is some of the most hilarious-yet-steamy sex scenes ever caught on film.

Patricia Clarkson and Richard Jenkins as Jamie and Dylan's parents provide guidance and advice, as naturally the arrangement does result in emotional entanglements. Clarkson is always a delight, and her character Lorna is a bohemian free spirit few other actresses could play well. She delivers my favorite line of the movie, "Baby, you need to adjust your fairy tale." Jenkins' Mr Harper struggles with declining mental health and pines for a lost love. Both of these characters feel as though there is an unfinished story arc that would have connected them, perhaps left on the cutting room floor.

Although Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was not one of my favorite novels in the Harry Potter series from J.K. Rowling, that didn't lower my expections for the pair of movies, particularly the one opening in theaters this weekend, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. After all, I didn't like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at all the first time I read it, and I thought the movie was better than the book overall (my review). And I did enjoy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, as you can see from my review last year. Still, I was wary of how the movie would be able to represent what I considered a very jumbled and confusing set of climactic sequences, not to mention an epilogue I could have done without.

I did enjoy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 while actually watching it -- but for days afterward, I found myself picking it apart in a way I haven't done with the previous movies, or at least not since the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I found rather rushed. In fact, some of the problems I had with this latest movie are the same ones I had with Goblet of Fire: the sacrifice of character time in favor of action and spectacle. (Hell, that's the problem with the first two movies as well, now that I think about it.)

"Oh, bother," said Pooh, "I hope my new film isn't just a cynical attempt to cash in on my beloved reputation."

Silly old bear -- you needn't have worried, for your latest adventure does you great justice. Winnie the Pooh is gentle and charming and funny and warm-fuzzily retro, a 2D (yea!), old school, hand-drawn Disney throwback that celebrates everything we've loved about Pooh and his friends for more than 80 years.

A melding of several familiar Pooh stories, Winnie the Pooh follows its titular character and his Hundred Acre Wood cohorts on a day that goes typically awry. Pooh (voiced by Jim Cummings, who's voiced the bear since the 1980s) awakens one morning to find he's out of honey (familiar story number one). While searching for a meal, he finds Eeyore (Bud Luckey), who's lost his tail (familiar story number two). Pooh's friends organize a contest to find Eeyore a suitable new tail, with the winner awarded a pot of honey. (Sadly, Pooh's attempt to replace Eeyore's tail with a cuckoo clock isn't terribly successful; a half-dozen other items are equally silly and no more suitable.)