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Sad and beautiful, that's The Illusionist in a nutshell. This animated movie is not geared toward small children -- it's from the same filmmaker who brought us The Triplets of Belleville, Sylvain Chomet. But where his previous film was riotous and joyful and just plain insane at times, The Illusionist is quieter, more structured and not afraid to venture into melodrama. It may not be upbeat, but that doesn't mean it was disappointing, at all.

The Illusionist originates from a script by the late French actor/filmmaker Jacques Tati. If you've seen The Triplets of Belleville, you know Chomet is a big fan of Tati -- there are a few Tati references sprinkled throughout the film, and the humor matches some of Tati's more chaotic comedy. But Tati's standard "M. Hulot" character also had a more dramatic side, which prevails in this movie.

Dialogue is minimal, the characters barely have names, and the storyline is uncomplicated. The title character (Jean-Claude Donda) is a French magician whose illusions are no longer in fashion by the late 1950s. Music halls in Europe prefer Beatles-like boy bands that draw crowds of groupies. He lands a gig in a remote Scottish village, where he delights crowds in a small pub ... including young Alice (Eilidh Rankin), the hotel maid. He's kind to Alice, so she follows him when he leaves the village and tries to make his living in Edinburgh.

Midway through Gnomeo and Juliet is the line, "I wish I could quit you."

Ahem. This probably is a first for an animated family film: a slightly altered quotation of the most famous line in Brokeback Mountain.

Yeah, I know: Wink, wink -- here's yet another slightly risqué adult pop cultural reference designed to entertain us grownups while sailing harmlessly over the kiddos' heads. Such references are now fundamental to the animated family movie formula, invariably a mix of endless 3D action sequences, ADD-friendly bits of dialogue, a chaste romance that blossoms to a soundtrack of insipid pop songs, and adult-oriented references to The Matrix, Scarface and/or CSI. Oh yeah -- there also may be a cutesy dancing thing at the end.

Sometimes this formula works smashingly well, as in the Toy Story franchise. But it's hit or miss in Gnomeo & Juliet, a frenetic, too-cute tale very loosely based (emphasis on very loosely) on Shakespeare's tragic love story.

If all you've seen of Sanctum is in the TV spots, you probably think as I did that it was directed by James Cameron. His name is all over it, along with "3D Experience," "Titanic" and "Avatar." That's not surprising, given the virtually unknown director (Alister Grierson) and cast. The most recognizable faces here are Richard Roxburgh, best known as the Duke in Moulin Rouge, and Ioan Gruffudd, who has a steady following for his role as Horatio Hornblower and for playing Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four movies. If you watch the trailer (and I strongly recommend against that, as it spoils some of the most striking moments in the film), the words "executive producer" do appear above Cameron's name, but it feels almost like rewatching Avatar.

I expected Sanctum to be a grand 3D adventure shot with the same fantastic technology as Avatar. Instead, the moviequickly began to feel more like a combination of Alive and Jurassic Park (even using the phrase "spared no expense"). The 3D work at the beginning of the film was difficult to watch, forcing me at times to close one eye or another due to rapid close-up movement and shifts in perspective. Once everything had moved underground to more confined spaces, it became bearable and allowed me to focus on the action.

In this crappy economy, you'd think that a movie about how people are dealing with layoffs and corporate consolidation and difficult economic situations would be compelling and fascinating. Unfortunately, if the movie is The Company Men, it fails to engage and in fact feels oddly out of step with today's world.

Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is a savvy sales director -- or something along those lines -- who finds himself unexpectedly laid off when the large corporation where he works consolidates his division down to nothing. Shipbuilding isn't what it used to be, you see. His boss, Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) is just as angry -- CEO James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) waited until Gene was out of town to take care of the consolidations and mass firings. Bobby's coworker Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper) worries he'll be next, and where is an over-50 guy who needs to keep working to keep his kids in college going to find another job?

One difficulty here is that all these guys are so very privileged at the beginning of the movie that it's difficult to feel much sympathy for them. Poor Bobby has to sell his Porsche! And his wife has to go back to work to support the family! And they can't cover the mortgage on a nurse's salary, so they're going to lose the house. Eventually things grow even worse for the family, but by that point it feels too late to be very sympathetic.

I'm a longtime fan of director Mike Leigh. From Naked to Happy-Go-Lucky, his films are completely naturalistic, populated with entirely human characters and emotionally powerful.

That said, I'm not quite a fan of Leigh's latest work, Another Year. Yes, it's the sort of high-quality cinema we expect from Leigh, a thoughtful and thoroughly believable collection of character studies with plenty to say about how we view our lives, ourselves and each other. But while Another Year is unquestionably well made, it's so relentlessly drab and dour that I just couldn't bring myself to like it.

The movie centers on Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), middle-aged Londoners who have enjoyed many years of marital bliss, personal fulfillment and professional success. However, most of their family and friends are anything but content with their lives. From their lonely son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), to their lonelier, hard-drinking friend Mary (Lesley Manville), Tom and Gerri find themselves surrounded by unhappiness, disappointment and spiritual ennui.

I hope this confession doesn't impact my credibility, but I have no shame in admitting I enjoyed the action film Con Air with veteran actors Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich and John Cusack. Despite the over-the-top Velveeta cheesiness and explosions, this film has just the right balance of action, violence, and melodrama that it continues to entertain me even today. A lot of credit goes to director Simon West, and therefore I was excited to see how West would handle a remake of a Charles Bronson action movie. The result is The Mechanic, another testerone-charged film that lacks the balance and strengths of West's previous film projects.

Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) answers vague advertisements for a mechanic, which translates to fixing things by cleanly taking out targets as a professional elite assassin. His assignments come from a company that is partly controlled by his close friend and mentor Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland). Bishop has no difficulties remaining detached from his targets until his assignment is to eliminate Harry. The company is not happy with Harry after a botched job in Capetown, and his ailing health and wayward drug-addicted son Steve (Ben Foster) isn't helping matters. With his skills and close attachment to Harry, Bishop accomplishes his mission quite easily and cleanly -- until Steve shows up on his doorstep. Steve wants to seek revenge on the "carjackers" that killed his father, and he is determined to have Bishop teach him the skills of the trade. Whether out of guilt or loyalty to Harry, Bishop takes on the impulsive hot-headed student who jeopardizes Bishop's typically deadly silent method and things get messy. 

Believe it or not, early in his career Javier Bardem was known for his smouldering good looks, and not his outstanding performances; he didn't even get credited for being in No News From God (an underrated gem of a film starring Penelope Cruz). In the last decade, that's all changed, and his latest Oscar-nominated performance in Biutiful is no exception, a movie seemingly made for someone who can entrance an audience just by his presence.

Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams) has a penchant for examining the less glamorous aspects of the human condition and finding incredible beauty in it, in the send of a flower that forces its way through cracked pavement to produce a small, startling bloom.

In Biutiful, Uxbal (Bardem) is a man doing what he can to care for his family, a middle man on the edge of legality and realities. Uxbal sees what most of us don't: people struggling to make a living in sweatshops, selling knockoffs on the street, and even the souls of the recently passed. He makes a living from those he tries to help, and the irony does not quite competely escape him. When Uxbal gets unwelcome news, it seems every decision in his life is coming back to haunt him, from helping the employers of illegal immigrants find work, to his schizophrenic ex trying to return to the family she abandoned.

Ivan Reitman has a directorial history of examining hypothetical, but impossible situations. He's brought us professional ghost hunters, a male pregnancy, a regular guy breaking up with Supergirl, and now in No Strings Attached he looks at the mythical conceit of friends having sex outside the bonds of a relationship, aka "friends with benefits."

I'm not sure I could have thought of a more unlikely pair than Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. Each plays a caricature of their own personalities. Portman is a serious, studious, and no-nonsense personality. Kutcher is, well Ashton Kutcher. Meeting first at summer camp as teens, the pair run into each other again and again in random places and become friends, with Kutcher's Adam having a solid crush on Portman's Emma the entire time.

When they finally, inevitably, end up in bed together, the sex is great, and Emma, who has always had a fear of emotional attachment, offers Adam an arrangement to become sex buddies. It is clear by this point that the two are already in a relationship, but they refuse to admit it. Through the continuing emotional ups and downs, they grow closer until it finally reaches a breaking point, and they each have to deal with their feelings.

I tend to smirk when I hear about producers who've said a movie won't play well in Middle America. But if there is a movie to which such a ridiculous generalized statement might apply, it's Somewhere. I say this as a fan of director Sofia Coppola's early work (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation).

Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a fortysomething action movie star who dwells in the famed Chateau Marmont hotel in LA. He doesn't instigate much in the film -- things just happen around him or to him. A friend throws parties in Johnny's suite, female hotel-dwellers flirt ceaselessly with him, and work-wise, his assistant/agent arranges everything for him: he just shows up.

For a film directed by a female, it's strange how dominant the male gaze is in Somewhere. Johnny sleepily watches pole-dancing strippers from his bed, women flash their breasts at him at various points of the film, and the only long-term relationship Mr. Marco has with any female is with his tween daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning). It's too bad Cleo doesn't stick around for the whole film -- the scenes between her and her father are the liveliest this movie gets.

When previews for The Dilemma aired on TV, I had little interest in seeing what appeared to be the latest bromantic comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James. I typically enjoy this style of comedy, and James's performance alongside Will Smith in Hitch is one of my favorites in the genre. However, I was apprehensive about whether there would be enough chemistry between James and Vaughn to believe an almost brotherly bond. I decided to take a chance after I learned that producer and director Ron Howard (Parenthood, The DaVinci Code) was heading this project. With his directorial talent, I expected The Dilemma to be well developed and more complex than the standard bromance.

The Dilemma starts off harmlessly enough as we meet confirmed bachelor Ronny (Vaughn) and happily married Nick (James). Buddies since college, they're partners in an auto design firm and are set on taking their company to the top with an innovative project to produce muscle-car sounds in environmentally friendly electric cars. Supporting them in their endeavors -- and in past trouble of Ronny's gambling addiction -- are Ronny's girlfriend, Beth (Jennifer Connelly), and Nick's wife, Geneva (Winona Ryder).