The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

20TH CENTURY FOX, PHIL BRAY
Will Poulter, right, and Reepicheep the warrior mouse are shown in a scene from "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader."

Loads of cash are being poured into it, but "The Chronicles of Narnia" just can't seem to find its footing on the big screen.

The first installment, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (2005), was a certifiable hit, grossing $291.7 million at the domestic box office and $745 million worldwide even though it was not a particularly good film, struggling to find a balance between its fairy tale atmosphere and heavy-handed Christian symbolism.

Part two, the darker, grittier "Prince Caspian" (2008), was more war movie than fairy tale and the best fantasy film of the decade without hobbits or Harry Potter. Yet audiences weren't particularly interested; its domestic box office take was less than half that of its predecessor, causing Disney to back out as the distributor of future installments. (20th Century Fox stepped up in its place.)

127 Hours

FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES, CHUCK ZLOTNICK
James Franco is shown in a scene from "127 Hours."

Could you do it?

That is the unspoken question of "127 Hours," a riveting, life-affirming story of determination and survival from director Danny Boyle, whose last film, "Slumdog Millionaire," swept the Academy Awards two years ago.

Would you do it?

Have you truly lived your life? Appreciated the people around you, your family and friends, and the time you spent with them?

Life, even to the most indomitable of spirits, can be such a fleeting thing. It's also our most precious gift, sharing it with others.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

WARNER BROS. PICTURES/JAAP BUITENDIJK
Daniel Radcliffe is shown in a scene from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1."

So here we are, nine years after the first film, 13 years after the publication of J.K. Rowling's first novel. The boy wizard Harry Potter and the actor who portrays him, Daniel Radcliffe is a boy no longer. Neither are his companions, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), the children we first met. The wise and kindly Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), teacher, adviser, friend and protector, is no more. Hogwarts, the school that had been the primary setting to this point, is virtually absent, replaced by the streets of London, the forests of the English countryside.

As film No. 7 in the saga, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1," opens and as it progresses, the bad guys, led by Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), have won and continue winning, claiming both Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic. They aim to subjugate not just the wizarding world but the world of Muggles, as well.

Unstoppable

20TH CENTURY FOX, ROBERT ZUCKERMAN
Chris Pine, left, and Denzel Washington are shown in a scene from "Unstoppable."

"Unstoppable" is a lot like the runaway freight train at the center of the movie's action.

Starting slowly, it's kind of boring as it chugs along the tracks. We expect something dramatic to happen, but we're not sure what that is. We don't know what the stakes are. It's just a half-mile of screeching, groaning metal meandering through rural Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, locomotive engineer Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) has taken conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine), fresh out of four months of training, under his wing for his first day on the job. Frank, who has been railroading for 28 years, and his other old-timer friends, many of whom have been laid off, resent youngsters like Will coming in and taking their jobs. So the pair spends the morning bickering and bonding, while dispatcher Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson) searches for a way to stop the runaway train.

Due Date

WARNER BROS., MELINDA SUE GORDON
Zach Galifianakis, left, and Robert Downey Jr. are shown in a scene from "Due Date."

At one point in "The Hangover" (2009), Bradley Cooper's character, Phil, says to Alan, played by Zach Galifianakis, "You are literally too stupid to insult."

But here's the thing: Alan isn't stupid. That's what "The Hangover" got right. Alan, we later learn, is kind of a genius. He's naive and childlike and very, very weird. He's driven by an endearing sincerity, and—here's the key—the movie never mocks him, never flat-out laughs at him and doesn't encourage the audience to do so either.

That brings me to "Due Date," which also features Galifianakis as a weird, immature man-boy and reteams the actor with his "Hangover" director, Todd Phillips. This time, Galifianakis' character, an aspiring thespian named Ethan Tremblay, is a buffoon. In "The Hangover," the gangster Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) laughs at Alan, saying, "It's funny because he's fat." Over and over again, "Due Date" all but says, "It's funny because he's stupid." Ethan feels like a refugee from "Dinner for Schmucks," the horrid summer comedy in which Galifianakis also appeared.

A new Halloween classic: Michael Dougherty's 'Trick 'r Treat'

WARNER BROS. PICTURES
The character Sam is shown in a scene from "Trick 'r Treat."

Halloween creates a natural setting for horror movies. It even gave John Carpenter's classic 1978 slasher and its many sequels and remake its title. But Michael Myers could kill teenagers on any day of the year and his story wouldn't change.

As popular as Halloween has become, there never had been a film specifically about the holiday itself until 2009, when "Trick 'r Treat," an anthology along the lines of "Creepshow" (1982), fought and scraped its way onto DVD and Blu-ray.

That realization drove writer-director Michael Dougherty, whose Oct. 28 birthday helped inspire his lifelong interest in Halloween, to make "Trick 'r Treat."

"Having grown up obsessed with the holiday, I really knew about a lot of the traditions and a lot of the back stories and origins of these traditions why we carve jack-o-lanterns and why we dress up and hand out candy," Dougherty said from Los Angeles in a phone interview.

The Social Network

COLUMBIA PICTURES, MERRICK MORTON
Jesse Eisenberg, left, and Joseph Mazzello are shown in a scene from "The Social Network."

I have heard people discuss "The Social Network," laughing it off as "the Facebook movie." But here's the thing: It isn't really about Facebook.

Directed by David Fincher and written for the screen by Aaron Sorkin (based on the 2009 book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich), "The Social Network" tells a classic American story of capitalism and greed, friendship and betrayal, fueled by envy and lost innocence, presenting Facebook co-founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg as Charles Foster Kane for the new millennium. He might even have a Rosebud or two of his own.

The great irony of the film is that Facebook, a sprawling online community of 500 million users based on acquiring "friends" and sharing, in some cases, the most minute details of your personal life with these people, is created from the ashes of bitterness and resentment, by a young man whose only true friend later sues him for millions.

The Girl Who Played with Fire

MUSIC BOX FILMS, KNUT KOIVISTO
Noomi Rapace portrays Lisbeth Salander in a scene from "The Girl Who Played with Fire."

Intrigued by the challenge of telling a story with no real beginning or end, I often find the middle installment of film trilogies to be the most interesting. "The Empire Strikes Back" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" immediately come to mind. To that we can potentially add "The Girl Who Played with Fire," the follow-up to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," based on the second novel in Swedish author Stieg Larsson's "Millenium" trilogy.

By now, the story behind the books and movies is well-known. Larsson, a journalist, died prior to the publication of his novels, which became worldwide best-sellers and spawned film adaptations from his native country, as well as American versions now in the works under the direction of David Fincher ("Seven," "Fight Club," "Zodiac").

Because most movie-goers here refuse to read subtitles, the English-language adaptations surely will reach a larger audience. But it is hard to imagine them being better than the original Swedish films, featuring the fiery Noomi Rapace in an iconic performance as the title character, misfit computer hacker Lisbeth Salander.

The Town

WARNER BROS. PICTURES, CLAIRE FOLGER
Rebecca Hall, left, and Ben Affleck are shown in a scene from, "The Town."

"The Town" is a film full of heists, shootouts and powerful emotional moments. But one quiet scene pulsates with more tension than any other.

Bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebbeca Hall), recently taken hostage during a bank robbery, unknowingly finds herself sharing a table at an outdoor cafe with two of the crooks. One, Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck, who also directed and co-wrote with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard, based on a novel by Chuck Hogan), the brains behind the operation, is her new suitor. He's wormed his way into her life to find out what she knows after learning she lives just a couple blocks away in the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. The other, Jem (Jeremy Renner), bears the only identifying mark Claire has on them—the tattoo on the back of his neck. Doug knows this, though Jem does not and Claire has no reason for suspicion.

It's a perfect scene of Hitchcockian suspense in a film that, on the whole, has more in common with "Heat" and Affleck's first directorial effort, the superb "Gone Baby Gone."

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.