Although it seems like she gets more attention for her off-camera life than her movie career, Angelina Jolie has managed to secure her place at the top when it comes to female movie stars. Not even Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock can match her ability to bounce between blockbuster and award-bait. She’s already been called the female Indiana Jones thanks to the Tomb Raider movies, but she has said that she wants to be James Bond and her latest film, Salt, may make her just that.

Upon hearing that Inception was director Christopher Nolan’s first original project since his 2001 breakout hit Memento, I was struck by a feeling of surprise. Even though the four films he made in between—Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight—were adaptations of previously produced works, Nolan managed to make them his own. Reportedly, Nolan actually pitched Inception immediately following the completion of 2002’s Insomnia, but the writing of the script he intended to take “a couple of months,” ultimately took eight years. Having seen the movie, the reason for this is clear. Inception is one of the most complex scripts I’ve ever seen brought to the big screen.

For most people, the title “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” surely recalls images of Mickey Mouse in a blue wizard cap naively attempting to magically control an army of brooms to do his chores. It’s the feature sequence in Disney’s 1940 classic Fantasia and arguably the most famous image of the animated mascot. Now, Disney has made a live-action, feature-length version. It may seem like a stretch, but so did the idea of a feature-length movie based on a theme park ride called “Pirates of the Caribbean” and that seemed to work out okay for Disney. The house that Mickey built can’t quite duplicate that success with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but it does provide for a couple hours of fun escapist entertainment.

Director M. Night Shyamalan’s name is all over the promotional materials for The Last Airbender. It’s appropriate. After all, he is the film’s director and, despite his last few flops, he is still a very popular director. Still, promoting this movie using his name is a felonious case of false advertising. The quality of the film does accurately reflect the quality of half of the director’s previous movies. Unfortunately, it’s not the good half. Still, there is one question about this movie that I just can’t answer: will its target audience be satisfied? My guess is yes.

After recently viewing Pixar’s brilliant Toy Story 3, I began racking my brain to come up with third movies in a series that stand out as the best. It’s a rare feat, but arguments could probably be made for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Goldfinger, Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban and a few others. Azkaban, certainly, stood out above its two predecessors and the same can be said for the third chapter in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. While I struggled to find reasons for the following the first two films received, I actually enjoyed—or, at least tolerated—Eclipse, a vast improvement over Twilight and New Moon.

I should admit right up front that the trailer for this new action comedy may have slightly interfered with my opinion of the film itself. Try as I do to avoid trailers—along with articles, plot descriptions, and even photos of upcoming films—they always seem to find me. In most cases, the danger of seeing the trailer is that it gives away far too much of the film’s plot details or best moments. It’s sometimes so bad that a “spoiler alert” warning at the beginning of the trailer wouldn’t be the worst idea. In the case of Knight and Day, however, it’s not that the trailer gives too much away. It’s simply that the trailer is just too much darn fun and the movie can’t quite live up to it.

There’s no denying that the 2010 version of The Karate Kid is a well-made movie. It’s entertaining, engaging and moves briskly for its surprisingly long running time of 140 minutes. It’s a cinch that a large portion of moviegoers—especially the younger ones—are going to leave the theater completely satisfied. Still, there’s going to be another group of moviegoers—specifically the ones who grew up in the ’80s—who are going to wonder: what was the point?

There are horror movies that scare you straight, while others scare you with a sense of humor; a kind of twinkle in their eye. Watching Splice, the new sci-fi horror from the director of 1997’s word-of-mouth hit Cube, you get the idea that the aim is to create a dark, moody, straight-forward horror thriller. Unfortunately, there are moments that go completely the other way and the combination just doesn’t work.

Movies based on video games have historically been about as successful as video game adaptation of movies: not very. Still, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time seemed destined to be an exception. After all, video games nowadays are basically interactive movies themselves and the adventures of a magical dagger wielding action hero seemed a perfect fit for the big screen. Additionally, the movie is co-produced by Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer who previously succeeded in turning a theme park ride into a hit swashbuckling adventure. Sadly, Prince of Persia never manages to get its exciting concept off the ground.

Writing a review of the new Sex and the City movie seems superfluous. Fans of the show are going to see the movie no matter what the critics say and those who haven’t seen any of the show or even the first movie are not likely to give in now. A review seems especially unnecessary coming from a source about as far away from the film’s target audience as possible, but I did actually somewhat enjoy the first film and expected to get a similar enjoyment out of its sequel. The story, however, just isn’t quite there this time around.