Machete

20TH CENTURY FOX, JOAQUIN AVELLAN
Danny Trejo stars as a legendary ex-Federale in a scene from "Machete."

A common complaint about movies today is that all of the best parts are in the trailer. So what happens when you make the trailer years before the feature?

That is the case of Robert Rodriguez's "Machete," which began life in 2007 as a fake trailer accompanying the Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino tribute to 1970s exploitation flicks, the double feature "Grindhouse."

Danny Trejo, finally getting his shot as the leading man after racking up nearly 200 film and TV roles in the past 25 years, is the title character, an ex-Federale-turned-day-laborer in a Texas border town hired to assassinate State Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), whose hard-line stance on illegal immigration includes support of an electrified fence. The whole thing is a setup engineered by Booth (Jeff Fahey), an aide to the senator, and the Mexican drug lord (Steven Seagal) responsible for the murder of Machete's wife and child three years earlier.

The Other Guys

COLUMBIA PICTURES-SONY, MACALL POLAY
Mark Wahlberg, right, and Will Ferrell are shown in a scene from "The Other Guys."

It seems the movie-going public has been suffering a bit from Will Ferrell overload. All you need to do is take a look at the box office returns and critical assessments of some his recent films, both of which bottomed out with last year's flop, "Land of the Lost."

So for "The Other Guys," he returned to his comfort zone with Adam McKay, who directed him in "Anchorman," "Talladega Nights" and "Step Brothers." The quality of their collaborations also has followed a noticeable downward trend, one that "The Other Guys" easily reverses.

The premise is golden: Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson are P.K. Highsmith and Christopher Danson, New York City's biggest hotshot cops. They are celebrities not just within the police department but to the public at large. Car chases, shootouts, millions of dollars in property damage—they're all in a day's work, even when the perps are caught with less than a pound of marijuana.

In short, they are the kind of cops that are the focus of most action movies.

Dinner for Schmucks

PARAMOUNT PICTURES, MERIE WEISMILLER WALLACE
Steve Carell, left, and Paul Rudd are shown in a scene from "Dinner for Schmucks."

Why the title, "Dinner for Schmucks"?

To my recollection, no one in the film ever uses the word "schmuck." In fact, the event of the title quite often is referred to as a "dinner for idiots," to which each of a group of financial executives brings a guest to (unknowingly) compete for the distinction of being the biggest idiot of the bunch.

That's one of the multiple head-scratching facets of the film.

The most problematic is that it takes two of our most gifted comic actors, the great Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, and turns them—and everyone else in the movie, for that matter—into obnoxious cartoons whose behavior is determined solely by the needs of the plot.

Inception

WARNER BROS., STEPHEN VAUGHAN
Marion Cotillard, left, and Leonardo DiCaprio are shown in a scene from "Inception."

Where to begin when discussing "Inception," Christopher Nolan's mind-bending, jaw-dropping summer masterpiece?

To say it is the best movie so far in 2010 is inadequate.

The writer-director's finest film to date? Now we're getting somewhere.

I don't know if any review truly can do justice to the achievement of "Inception." I could describe the plot beat by beat, and it still would not accurately convey what the film is about and the experience of taking it all in on the big screen.

You've seen glimpses of the spectacle in commercials—Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page calmly walking through the streets of Paris while the city folds over on top of itself; the same two actors sitting at a cafe as their surroundings explode; a freight train barreling through a city street; a zero-gravity action sequence in a hotel hallway.

The technical virtuosity pouring from every frame is astounding.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT/KIMBERLEY FRENCH
Xavier Samuel, center, is shown in a scene from "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse."

It is not exactly praise to call "Eclipse" the best film in "The Twilight Saga" to date.

Cliched, maudlin dialogue and painfully wooden acting gussied up with vampires who sparkle in the sunlight and computer-generated werewolves marked the first two entries, "Twilight" and "New Moon."

And it's more of the same in "Eclipse." The difference is this time, the reins are in the hands of a director ("30 Days of Night's" David Slade) who has some aptitude for creating an air of menace and shooting an action scene.

The story picks up where "New Moon" left off, with Bella (Kristen Stewart) torn between two creepy, borderline stalkers: the eternally 17-year-old vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) and the werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner).

The A-Team

20TH CENTURY FOX, DOUG CURRAN
Bradley Cooper, left, and Liam Neeson are shown in a scene from "The A-Team."

I remember having an "A-Team" bicycle as a child. I think it was red and black. So I must have watched and enjoyed the TV series that aired from 1983 to 1986 on NBC. Yet aside from Mr. T's Mohawk, I cannot remember a single thing about it.

Hannibal, Faceman, Murdock? Not ringing a bell. The theme music? Nope.

There was no nostalgia factor for me, then, as I watched the big-screen version of "The A-Team" directed by Joe Carnahan ("Narc," "Smokin' Aces"). No memories stirred up, no childlike excitement. Nothing.

I don't know whether that's my fault or the movie's.

Get Him to the Greek

UNIVERSAL PICTURES, GLEN WILSON
Jonah Hill, left, and Russell Brand are shown in a scene from "Get Him to the Greek."

The "him" of "Get Him to the Greek" is the fictional British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), first seen two years ago in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." The "Greek" is the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, where Aldous and his band Infant Sorrow recorded one of the best-selling live albums of all time. Young record company suit Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) must bring Aldous there for a special 10-year anniversary performance.

The catch: Aldous, ardently sober when we last saw him, has fallen spectacularly off the wagon following the failure of his latest album, the hilariously tasteless "African Child," and his split from Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), his longtime girlfriend and mother of his son.

On strict orders from his boss, Sergio (Sean "P. Diddy" Combs), Aaron must retrieve Aldous from London, get him to New York for an appearance on the "Today" show, then take him to Los Angeles for his comeback concert. Aldous, though, is a drinking, drugging mess. It's like watching an episode of VH1's "Behind the Music" in the present tense as he leads Aaron, not to be confused with the character Hill played in "Sarah Marshall," from one party to the next, introducing him to a smorgasbord of substances.

Letters to Juliet

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT
Amanda Seyfried is shown in a scene from "Letters to Juliet.

Sometimes there comes a movie that is easy to nitpick—the story is overly contrived, the dialogue trite, the characters crafted a little too perfectly to fit the demands of the plot—yet it succeeds on the basis of pure delight, the optimism it emits and an earned happily-ever-after ending.

That's "Letters to Juliet," a romantic comedy starring the genre's rising "it" girl, Amanda Seyfried, and in a beautiful performance, the venerable Vanessa Redgrave. The multigenerational love story shakes up the rom-com conventions just enough to add a hint of unpredictability and weight to a blooming romance.

Seyfried, all wide eyes and expressive, innocent face, is Sophie, a fact-checker at The New Yorker who longs to be a writer. She and her fiancé, Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), travel to Verona, Italy, on a sort of working pre-honeymoon. The distant, distracted Victor spends most of his time visiting suppliers for the restaurant he's opening back home, leaving Sophie to wander on her own.

Robin Hood

UNIVERSAL PICTURES, KERRY BROWN
Russell Crowe is shown in a scene from "Robin Hood."

The Robin Hood story has been told over and over again by Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, Disney, Kevin Costner, Mel Brooks and too many more to mention. So the best thing about Ridley Scott's new film, cleverly titled "Robin Hood," is that it does not cover the same ground as those that have come before it.

Scott's "Robin Hood" serves as a sort of prequel to the well-known legend. Instead of building the story around stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, screenwriter Brian Helgeland ("L.A. Confidential," "A Knight's Tale") focuses on how the English folk hero, known here as Robin Longstride, achieved his outlaw status. As you would expect in a Ridley Scott historical epic, that occurs only after much medieval warfare, swordplay and archery.

Ostensibly, the idea is to focus on the man behind the legend. But since there is no definitive history of the man and some question whether he ever existed at all, the movie really is just another Hollywood concoction.

Not that there's anything wrong with that—not when it's made with such skill as this, at least.

Iron Man 2

PARAMOUNT PICTURES, FRANCOIS DUHAMEL
Gwyneth Paltrow, left, and Robert Downey Jr. are shown in a scene is shown from "Iron Man 2."

Robert Downey Jr. seemingly can do no wrong.

Does anyone think "Sherlock Holmes" would have been even half as entertaining as it was without him as its anchor?

Could anyone else have emerged from a broad summer action-comedy like "Tropic Thunder" with an Oscar nomination?

And let's not even try to imagine another actor as billionaire-industrialist-turned-humanitarian/superhero Tony Stark in "Iron Man." The 2008 blockbuster established Downey as one of Hollywood's most bankable and engaging leading men, and opened the floodgates to a vast library of Marvel Comics titles and characters.