Chief among them is Anna Faris, who plays Ally Darling. At the start of the film, Ally is having a particularly bad day. She begins by breaking up with her latest Mr. Wrong (Zachary Quinto), a vegan bike messenger who’s too commitment phobic to go with Ally to her sister’s wedding. Later, she gets fired by her weird, finger-sniffing boss (Joel McHale) and reads an article in Marie Claire magazine claiming that the average number of sexual partners for most women is 10 and those with more than 20 will never marry.

This is not good news for Ally. Upon tallying her “number,” she discovers that she is dangerously close to that lonely-spinster-forever integer. So she decides to put the kibosh on new lovers and track down her exes instead, hoping to find that one of them is a previously overlooked gem.

To this end, she enlists her smoking-hot neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans), to help her locate and re-date her exes. Colin also happens to be her “slutty” counterpart, who beds a new girl every night and picks up his newspaper naked every morning. In exchange for his help, Ally allows him to hide out in her apartment from the conquests he’s looking to ditch. Sidebar: all girls should be lucky enough to wake up to Chris Evans and his Captain America physique answering the door clad in nothing but a strategically placed dishtowel each and every day.

Penned by seasoned sitcom writers Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden (from the book 20 Times a Lady by Karyn Bosnack), What’s Your Number? is really a traditional romantic comedy, wrapped up in a slightly raunchy package. Even though Ally and Colin talk about vaginas and hand jobs a lot, Allan and Crittenden still have true love and happily ever after on their brains.

Along the way to that goal, director Mark Mylod allows Faris to do what she does best. That is to charm the pants off of us with wholesome Playboy-bunny-next-door good looks and dumb-like-a-fox delivery. It’s her signature technique, previously showcased in a whole host of Scary Movie installments, as well as (my personal favorite) 2008’s The House Bunny. What’s Your Number? isn’t as funny as that film, but then Emma Stone and Kat Dennings aren’t there to support Faris’ doe-eyed schtick.

Instead, she’s got Ari Graynor as her perfect, soon-to-be-wed sister and Blythe Danner as her overbearing would-be social climber mother. Both actresses are obviously capable of a lot more but have completely underwritten characters. This, I assume, is to make more room for the parade of exes that include Andy Samberg (the puppeteer), Chris Pratt (Faris’s real-life hubs), Martin Freeman (the British one), Thomas Lennon (the Criss-Angel wannabe), Mike Vogel (the gynecologist), Anthony Mackie (the black, gay Republican), and Dave Annable (the wealthy dreamboat). That’s only a small sample of her 20 lovers, but it’s still way too many. The funniest of the bunch is Samberg, coincidentally on-screen the least. Meanwhile, the encounter with Freeman lets Faris show off a series of terrible accents to hilarious effect. The rest are just there to illustrate the way that Ally has of morphing her personality and appearance to suit the men she’s with.

That’s something she doesn’t have to do (hint, hint) in her developing friendship with gorgeous Colin, who the writers shrewdly resist turning into Henry Higgins (or worse yet, that douchebag Gerard Butler played in The Ugly Truth). Not only does the pair have an offbeat kind of chemistry, Evans also does an admirable job–with a too-long look here and a hidden smile there–of showing Colin falling for Ally at a believable pace.

What’s Your Number? is hardly groundbreaking stuff. Actually,it’s a chick-flick date movie in one of its clearest iterations. Still, Anna Faris is adorable enough that you want good things for that self-professed “jobless whore who’s slept with 20 guys.” And did I mention Chris Evans was good looking?

As the film opens, the A’s lose a playoff series to the New York Yankees, dashing their championship hopes. A moment later, a screen contrasting the Yanks’ $125 million budget with Oakland’s paltry $39 million reveals the fix inherent in the game. Some teams, with their major markets and deep pockets, can afford to pay top dollar for the best players in the world. And some teams have their top players like Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen poached right from under them.

That’s the position Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is in when we meet him. Unable to get a penny more to replace his stars, Beane consults his team of scouts. Their world is one of dingy, yellowed game rooms filled with gaudy nylon jackets and Dixie Cup spittoons. It’s also a world built on the conventional wisdom that you can predict how well a player will do based on things like his physical build, how fast he runs, and whether or not he has an ugly girlfriend. As we learn from a series of flashbacks, Beane had all those “right” things when he was scouted out of high school–and away from a full-ride scholarship at Stanford–but washed out anyway. He knows he needs to play the game differently; he just isn’t sure how.

At least not until he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), fresh from Yale’s hallowed ivy walls with a brand spanking new economics degree and not a moment spent on a baseball diamond. The shy guy is armed only with a much-derided book from the 1970s about a system called sabermetrics and a wicked penchant for Excel. With those, he figures out a way to assemble a team with an impressive record of getting on base (and thus, scoring runs) for pennies on the dollar. These guys may throw funny or be too old. They may even be catchers that Beane’s coaches have to turn into first-basemen. Hidden in there, though, is a championship-winning team.

If you’re a fan of sports movies like I am, this is where you expect the Hollywood underdog story to emerge. You know, the one where the rag-tag bunch of losers bond and realize that none of them may be stars individually, but together they’re a team capable of taking on anything. Through on-field montages, you see that catcher become the best first baseman ever and that funny-throwing pitcher hit his stride. And you wait for it to build to a third-act showdown with their old nemesis the Yankees.

Right. Did I mention Moneyball was a long-time pet project of Steven Soderbergh, ultimately written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Capote helmsman Bennett Miller? So that doesn’t happen. This film is refreshingly free of all the predictable schmaltz.

What you do get from Moneyball is a well-made movie. Miller has great instincts for the film’s pacing and shrewdly cuts in flashbacks of a young Billy (Reed Thompson), as well as tender, but unsentimental, scenes of the adult Beane with his daughter. It helps to create a fully developed lead character who is not as brash as his baseball persona would have you believe.

Miller smartly uses archival game and announcer footage as a means of shortening what could have been long, expositional jags. Moneyball does still have something of a seventh-inning stretch (after Beane finds the method but before the team hits its record-breaking 20-game streak) with not a lot of time spent on the actual baseball field. But Sorkin works his magic to turn statistical chatter and “moneyball” number crunching into witty, sparky dialogue. It’s the same trick he pulled with last year’s The Social Network, and it’s just as effective the second time around.

It helps that supporting players Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman (who puts in a believably grumpy performance as A’s coach Art Howe) are terrific at delivering Sorkin’s cleverly scripted dialogue. Of course, none of that would mean a thing without a standout performance by Brad Pitt. Beane’s story, his likeability and believability are what holds this movie–essentially about actuarial sciences–together.

Pitt’s face spends so much time annoying me from the cover of supermarket tabloids, it’s easy to forget that his natural onscreen ease is the real reason that he’s a star. His easygoing smile, mixed with a nervous, manic energy (Beane doesn’t always believe the hype, it’s clear) and megawatt charisma keep all eyes glued to him. In one scene, Pitt portrays Beane carrying on four simultaneous conversations to make a key trade. His fast-talking gear switches are seamless, smooth and a legitimate delight to watch. You want that guy to win. And even when he doesn’t, he makes you think he has. Someone hand that man his Oscar nomination, please.

That’s another way that Moneyball is different than other baseball movies. Although the Red Sox borrowed his methodology two years later to break the curse of the Bambino, Billy Beane is still waiting for his winning season. Still, this unconventional movie about an unconventional team goes to show that it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

It opens on a shot of Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow), already looking queasy, sweaty and yellowish at an airport bar. As she chats on the phone to her unseen lover–not the one who put that shiny diamond ring on her finger–she dips her sickly hand into an open bowl of bar peanuts. After a business trip to Hong Kong, she’s in Chicago on a layover before heading home to Minnesota.

Beth’s circuitous route home guarantees maximum damage. In quick order, we watch a Chinese waiter, a Japanese businessman, an English fashion model, and Beth’s young son fall victim to the disease. Her husband, Mitch (Matt Damon), is left with just half of his family to take care of as things get out of control. We’re talking marshal law and out-of-control looting.

Meanwhile, the CDC represented by Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishbourne) in Atlanta and field specialist Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) in Minnesota, the World Health Organization, under Dr. Leonora Orantes’s (Marion Cotillard) pretty, pant-suited direction, and the US Department of Homeland Security are mobilized to unravel and cure the mystery contagion. But they–including doctors played by Jennifer Ehle, Demetri Martin and Elliot Gould–must work faster than not only the disease but also a fear-mongering, snaggle-toothed blogger named Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law).

Contagion certainly sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it? Like some brilliant hybrid of 1995′s Outbreak and Soderbergh’s own Traffic, right? No such luck, friends. This dull, emotionless picture is like watching a documentary about the CDC: all orange biohazard suits and no drama. Written in cold, antiseptic style by Scott Z. Burns (who collaborated with both Soderbergh and Damon on The Informant!), Contagion is littered with red herrings, dropped narrative threads, and dead ends.

Let’s see, there’s Beth’s multinational employer, whose sinister-ness is implied but never explored. There’s Mitch’s inexplicable immunity to the pandemic, which is never studied to find a cure. Even conspiracy theorist Krumwiede is not focused on the right conspiracies. That the CDC is in bed with Big Pharma and not telling folks that there’s a natural homeopathic remedy is not conspiracy. It’s fact. All the thriller tropes are there, but the actual thrills never quite make it to the party.

Perhaps Burns and Soderbergh wanted to root Contagion in reality and show audiences how things might actually play out if some especially virulent disease entered our modern world. In a post-Katrina atmosphere of watching things fall apart, it’s an understandable aim. While I appreciate the filmmaker’s documentarian style, there’s something’s amiss when I can’t bring myself to give two hoots that 1% of the world’s population vanishes within three months. That’s what I call a flaw in the storytelling.

The all-star cast and global scope formula worked for Soderbergh in Traffic but fails him here. The size of the cast–all fine actors, each given about 11 minutes of screen time to prove it–is one of Contagion’s biggest problems. The fact that the majority of them play doctors, who seem mostly insulated from the disease may be why. That birds-eye, procedural approach may work on freak-of-the-week episodic television. But this isn’t an episode of House, although with a cast like this, I half-expect to see Robert Sean Leonard in some un-credited background role. Sure, there’s a nod to each of the doc’s vulnerabilities, but then the camera must flit along to the next plotline somewhere in Cairo or Djibouti or wherever.

When I initially saw the trailer for Contagion, my first thought was: again? From the previously mentioned Outbreak to Stephen King’s The Stand to the A&E mini-series The Andromeda Strain and even the new Torchwood: Miracle Day, this is territory that has been mined time and again. In all of those, audiences are forced to examine themselves and the world they condone and consent to live in. With this film, there are no good guys or bad guys. Nobody did it. Nobody is to blame. And consequently, nobody cares.

Apollo 18 skips right over opening credits and gets straight to the purported home video and NASA surveillance footage. Through these grainy 16mm images, we watch a team of three astronauts head where only 12 others have gone before. While pilot John Grey (Ryan Robins, uncredited) orbits the cratered rock, astronauts Nathan Walker and Benjamin Anderson (Lloyd Owens and Warren Christie, also uncredited)touch down on the surface to install a series of cameras. It is 1974–in the midst of the Cold War–and the cameras, they have been told, are meant to spy on the Russians back home on terra firma. But that isn’t what happens.

Instead, they discover the relics of a Russian moon module that isn’t supposed to be there, as well as the remains of its cosmonaut. Then, unexplained bumps and creaks in the night (it’s always night where they are) lead to one astronaut coming down with a strange infection. As the story builds, the astronauts learn that they are not alone.

Directed by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego from a script by Brian Miller and Cory Goodman, Apollo 18 clearly understands the genre that it is working in. It gives us a legitimate reason why there are cameras constantly recording everywhere that our main characters take us. And aside from some intrigue about the cause of the strange happenings (is it a missing Russian cosmonaut, somehow still alive on the surface, or is it something alien), the film skips over the usual Hollywood third-act twists and turns. Still, the acting by television veterans Owens and Christie is solid, and there’s more than one effective jump-out-of your-seat moment.

Although nothing scary happens in the first 15 or 20 minutes of the film, these early scenes are an accurate re-creation of vintage moonwalk footage, right down to the skillfully executed space suit costumes. Moreover, seeing the Earth reflected in the astronaut’s shaded visors is a sight for the sore eyes of all of us living in a post-NASA world. I do wonder if this film’srelease–moved from March 2011 to January 2012 and back–was timed to take advantage of the end of the US space shuttle program. If so, it’s a well-played move by its producers and studio execs.

When the action does take off, Lopez-Gallego employs the now-usual bag of tricks–jump cuts, shaky cameras, and static interruption, among them–to keep you squinting and trying to see what’s yet to be shown. Ultimately, he shows very little. Some audience members will be frustrated with the less-than-fleshed-out extraterrestrials (hint: they’re not flesh at all), but those who like a healthy dose of science with their fiction will appreciate that the moon’s inhabitants are not carbon-based. I think showing only flashes of the enemy was a shrewd choice given the film’s small budget (not as small as Paranormal’s $15,000, I’m sure). Better rarely seen aliens than crappy ones, I always say.

Getting these details right is important because it makes it easier to get past certain harder-to-swallow conceits. Like how does a Saturn rocket take off without anyone noticing? I know there was no YouTube or Twitter back then, but seriously? Oh yeah, and how the heck did all of this footage–including some handheld home video–make it back to Earth? There are other soft spots in the writing of Apollo 18. For example, one astronaut urges the other to save himself because “they only want me.” Now how on the moon would he know that? And the ending, which I won’t spoil here, smacks a little of that story you wrote in the eighth grade but couldn’t decide how to finish, so you made everything blow up.

If your scientific mind can let go for a while, you’ll find Apollo 18 reasonably entertaining. I’ll admit, however, that it doesn’t match the fear and vulnerability factor of Paranormal Activity. But it does make you wonder. Why didn’t we ever go back?

The film opens with a Victorian-era prologue. The master of a sprawling gothic mansion lures a pretty chambermaid into his basement workroom, where he pounces on her and uses a hammer and chisel to extract everyone of her pearly whites. His ghoulish grin reveals he’s already done the same to himself. What’s even more unsettling is that the two sets of chompers are meant to be an offering to an unseen, whispering army of creatures, who are not so easily satisfied. Their response to the gift: “We want child’s teeth.”

That’s our first clue that this is no place for young Sally (Bailee Madison) to be sloshing around in her Wellies. Nonetheless, her off-screen mom has sent the little girl to live with her father, Alex (Guy Pearce) and his younger girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes) in the creepy old house. No sooner does Sally unpack her pink overnighter than the little tooth lovers begin whispering her name.

Dad is so distracted with restoring the place and getting onto the cover of Architectural Digest, though, that he doesn’t notice his daughter’s moody curiosity morphing into abject terror. It’s Kim that begins to uncover the evil that lives in the house and threatens their already unstable family unit.

As with many horror films, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark isn’t really concerned with what it purports to be about. Sure, director Troy Nixey shows us the sinister creatures–too early and often, I might add–that threaten young Sally and plucky Kim. And yes, the computer-generated little guys are a genuinely scary mix of one part Dobby, the house elf, and two parts lemur with shark teeth. But they’re not the bad guys at the heart of this story. Not really.

Unfortunately, it’s clear from del Toro’s script (written with Matthew Robbins) that he thinks they are. But he’s missed the point–one which the trailers are savvy enough to get at–entirely. Is evil haunting the house? Or is Sally, an abandoned little girl, the one who is haunted and going mad for lack of love? Is there a parallel between the house’s original owner, who goes crazy from losing his child, and Alex, who doesn’t seem to want his around? The script makes the answer to all of these questions too clear, too soon and suffers for it.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark would have been a much more intriguing film had there been more…intrigue in it. It’s the key ingredient in the handful of scenes that jolt the audience to attention. In one, Sally slowly crawls under her covers with a flashlight on her way to the foot of the bed to confront the monster face-to-face for the first time. It takes what feels like ages. It’s terrific and terrifying pacing that works exactly as it should. Instead of continuing like this, Nixey gives us interminable scenes of the CG critters running around the house, not scaring anyone at all.

For her part, eleven-year-old Bailee Madison manages to imbue Sally with moodiness, without being bratty, so that you actually care whether she lives or dies. The same can’t be said of Pearce or Holmes. I ordinarily enjoy both performers (seriously, see Holmes in The Gift. She’s pretty good.), but here Pearce looks bored and Holmes appears scared from the get-go. Neither sets the right tone or builds the necessary mystery to sustain the film.

Ultimately, the trailers for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark have a better grip on horror than the film itself. Sometimes it’s not what you know. It’s what you don’t.

There to help him in his investigation are fish-out-water American FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) and a newbie Garda—that’s Gaelic for “guard”—named Aidan Mcbride (Rory Keenan). When the first murder is uncovered with the number “5 ½” scrawled in blood on the wall, McBride is convinced that it is part of an occult serial murder spree, with movies from David Fincher’s Seven to Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 as his proof. But Everett explains that the real culprits’ motives involve trafficking $500 million (or maybe it’s a half-billion; it’s one of the film’s running jokes) worth of cocaine. Falstaffian Boyle and straitlaced Everett couldn’t have less in common but—in true buddy-cop fashion—they must meld their styles to solve the crime when naïve McBride ends up in trouble.

Don’t be fooled, though. The Guard is not really a whodunit. It’s revealed pretty early on that the criminals in question include mastermind Francis Sheehy (Liam Cunningham), a twitchy, comic sociopath named Liam O’Leary (David Wilmot), and a too-sensible English henchman called Clive Cornell (Mark Strong). Together with our trio of good guys, these make up six of the most idiosyncratic on-screen characters this summer. They’re all tropes, of course, but played by actors strong enough to make them genuinely interesting. If you don’t believe me, watch as Strong fustily refuses to muss his pants while disposing of a body or Wilmot’s buggy blue eyes dart around a room after he’s shot. That’s not to mention Gleeson’s warm, winning chemistry with Fionnula Flannigan, who plays his ailing mother.

This fine comic acting is buttressed by John Michael McDonagh’s strong writing and directing. He manages to string together so many heavily accented cuss words, the script starts to sound like poetry. It must be a family trait: this McDonagh is the brother of In Bruges’ helmer Martin McDonagh. As director, he also offers some visually interesting vistas of the Irish countryside (fog, anyone?). Along with the interior of Boyle’s bright, viridian-colored apartment and some wacky floral shirts, silk smoking jackets, and velvet blazers, it shows a wonderful, easy playfulness that makes The Guard tick.

My only complaint is that my untrained American ears could have used a subtitle or two to decipher some of the soupy Gaelic wordplay. I’m sure I missed a good number of jokes at the expense of the English, the Welsh, Dubliners, and the good old U.S. of A. Every line of what I could make out in The Guard, though, was as good as Guinness.

But, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

These days, it feels as though our moral landscape is murkier (Someday my children may disagree.) So many of us–from the vegans who hug trees to the squints who cure diseases–mean well. But can we ever do well? After all, it’s not the road to heaven that’s paved with good intentions.

That’s the question at the heart of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the Fox franchise’s most recent reboot. In it, James Franco plays Will Rodman, a sensitive scientist with a personal stake in finding a cure for Alzheimer’s: his own father (John Lithgow) is quickly being ravaged by the disease. In his experiments, he comes upon a promising serum that, tested in chimpanzees, repairs damaged neural pathways and increases intelligence. Will is set to present his findings to his big-pharma bosses, including a money-grubbing superior named Jacobs (David Oyelowo in a never-ending parade of Brioni suits) when disaster strikes. The main test subject, a chimp nicknamed Bright Eyes, secretly gives birth and goes berserk in order to protect her young. The project is cancelled and the scientists are compelled to kill all of the simian subjects.

Well, not all. Will becomes a foster father to the baby chimp in the hopes that the furry friend will help stem his father’s descent into dementia. As an added bonus, it seems that not only has the little ape named Caesar (a motion-captured Andy Serkis) inherited his mother’s green eyes, but he’s also inherited her advanced intelligence. After a few years, the precocious Caesar becomes a moody, confused adolescent gifted with the ability to reason, use sign language, and feel, but lacking the freedom to journey outside without a leash around his neck.

After a couple of run-ins with a dickwad neighbor, Will is forced to confine Caesar to an ape sanctuary, only sanctuary isn’t the right word. It’s more like a Dickensian animal prison, where Caesar–along with other chimps, orangutans and gorillas–is treated cruelly by a tool named Dodge Landon (Tom Felton). It’s here that Caesar comes to understand that he belongs neither in Will’s world nor in the world of his fellow apes. After being electro-shocked and having a hose turned on him, he decides to take a Promethean turn, stealing Will’s serum, converting his cellmates to intelligent apes, and leading them in an uprising against their oppressors.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an interesting animal in that it’s a careful character study of an animal. This is computer-generated magic at its finest, not only because all of the apes are rendered realistically enough not to cause constant distraction, but because Caesar, as embodied by Andy Serkis (also riveting as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy), is the most human thing about the film. Motion capture technology has become all the rage–from the groundbreaking Avatar to that dreadful Green Lantern business—but it’s only in the hands, face and body of a truly gifted character-actor like Serkis that it becomes anything more than just a gimmick.

As with Gollum, I could hardly pull my eyes away from Caesar’s as they alternately expressed curiosity, devotion, and rage. The Bright Eyes moniker is a clear nod to the 1968 franchise opener–a nickname given to Charlton Heston by Kim Hunter’s Dr. Zira–but even more so to Serkis’ unique ability to convey so much with those big ol’ peepers of his. His casting as Caesar by relative newbie director Rupert Wyatt is the film’s strongest move.

That’s not to say Wyatt doesn’t excel in other areas, including a fun-to-watch, suitably blockbuster-y final showdown on the Golden Gate Bridge. Big stuff gets hurled, cars and choppers get blown up, and it all looks pretty good. Still, if that’s the sort of action you’re headed to the theater for, you should be aware that you’ll wait a long, long time for it. The majority of Rise of the Planet of the Apes consists of watching Caesar grow and develop relationships, first with humans, then with his own kind.

As the humans go, Franco and Freida Pinto (cast as his gorgeous but otherwise pointless veterinarian love interest) recite the dialogue they’ve been given well enough. I only wish that scripters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver had given them more lines that reflected the morally murky world I mentioned earlier. Instead, these characters are so bland that humans–with the exception of Landon and Jacobs–come off as victims, barely complicit in their own inevitable demise.

The truth is much more complicated than that. It’s rooted in the question of our time: Is any attempt to disrupt nature from taking its course an abomination, even if it’s done with empathy, kindness and the very best intentions? I see a possible answer hinted at in Lithgow’s performance and his character’s final fate. But the allegory could have been fleshed out further. Maybe they’re saving it for the sequel.

Even with that criticism, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a thoroughly entertaining summer movie. As a prequel, it manages a reasonable amount of reverence for the original (the script manages to work in one of the film’s most famous lines with only the slightest whiff of camp) while re-positioning it for a modern audience. Plus, it gives Andy Serkis a venue to show off his skill. And I’ll never complain about that.

In Part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the story resumes in medias res. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his two best friends, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), are still hunting down the seven magical horcruxes, the physical objects that have been imbued with pieces of evil wizard Lord Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) soul. They can only kill the powerful villain after these have all been destroyed. Meanwhile, Voldemort has gathered a formidable fascist army of magical creatures to take over Hogwarts on his way to world domination and Muggle extermination.

There’s no “previously on Harry Potter” here, so if it’s been a while since you’ve read or seen the first part of the story, it would be wise to hit Netflix for a quick refresher. The good thing about this approach, however, is that the film dives headlong into the action, taking us on a whizzing roller coaster ride into the vaults of a wizarding bank that’s custom-made for 3D.

But this film, unlike its earliest predecessors, isn’t just about the childlike wonderment of Rowling’s rich imagination. Yates’ and cinematographer Eduardo Serra’s dark, moody scene setting and composer Alexandre Desplat’s near-gothic score drive that point home. Yes, the film feature one thrilling, deftly choreographed magical duel after another and some good-looking special effects. It also captures a poignant nostalgia for a saga 10 years in the making (representing a journey into adulthood for not only the characters but for many of its viewers) as the Boy Who Lived learns about ultimate sacrifice, good and evil, and growing up.

It’s fitting, then, that many of the characters we first encountered in their awkward pre-adolescence have grown up wonderfully. Both Radcliffe and Watson deliver performances that are stronger and surer here than they’ve ever been. Grint has always been a natural at humor, but here has brief opportunities in scenes with Watson to show his romantic and dramatic potential. Meanwhile, Matthew Lewis, who some of my friends have started calling “Hot Neville”, stands out in a pivotal speech that he delivers fearlessly–as both character and actor–in a face-off with Voldemort.

No matter who played him, Lord Voldemort would have be an unforgettable movie villain. But with his serpentine physical ticks, hissing line delivery, and insistent but not invulnerable portrayal of evil, Fiennes gives a performance that makes it impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.

That said, it’s Alan Rickman who earns the gold star for most remarkable and too-short performance in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. As Professor Severus Snape, his pallid looks and supreme dislike for Harry have cast suspicion on his allegiances throughout the series. When Snape’s true motives are finally revealed to Harry in his final on-screen moments, it’s impossible not to look back in awe at the way Rickman has built a superbly nuanced character, brick by brick, over the last 10 years. As such, Yates’ choice to show less of Snape during his last stand than Harry’s reaction to it is a strange and unsatisfactory one. After all, in just a few quick glances, Rickman conveys a misunderstood and quiet heroism that is unmatched anywhere else in the film.

Reading the books, Harry never struck me as a hero, just a smart, kind boy with the most loyal and devoted friends ever. My biggest problem with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is that many of those friends aren’t given the room they deserve to shine. There is significant cutting of Rowling’s original story—both to divide the saga into two films and to bring the final installment to a manageable two-hour runtime. When Harry’s friends give their lives to protect him in the books, I felt as though I had personally lost a friend, relative or beloved teacher. Unfortunately, the film either cuts or sanitizes those deaths—many of which now appear off-screen—so that they are not felt as deeply as they could or should be.

Likewise, the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort wasn’t as monumental as I had hoped. It stands out because all of the action to this point—from Professor McGonagall’s (Maggie Smith) conjuring of a stone army to Mrs. Weasley’s (Julie Walters) showdown with Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter)—has been unimpeachable. But I suppose that the challenge with bringing a beloved book to the screen is always going to be trying to please everyone. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to please most of the people most of the time.

It’s not that these guys hate their jobs, just their bosses. Nick (Jason Bateman) is a workaholic Wall Street-type who’s been busting his hump for paranoid megalomaniac Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) for nearly a decade. Just when Nick thinks all the 16-hour days, weekend work, and missing his grandmother’s dying moments are about to pay off with a promotion, Harken eliminates the position.

Meanwhile, lady-killer Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) finds himself unexpectedly working for his awesome boss’s (Donald Sutherland) cocaine-addicted son, Bobby (Colin Ferrell). Bobby isn’t just bad for Kurt’s career prospects, he’s bad for the environment and wants to start dumping the company’s toxic chemical waste irresponsibly so he can make more money for blow.

Finally there’s mousy, high-pitched dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day). All he wants is to marry his fiancée and not get sexually harassed by his violently horny boss lady, Dr. Julia (Jennifer Aniston).

One boozy evening, Nick, Kurt and Dale start dreaming aloud of killing off their employers. But somehow–the script doesn’t dwell too long on such pesky details–the boys start trying to turn their far-fetched dreams into reality. They ask their OnStar guide to direct them to the most dangerous bar in town, where they meet Dean “Motherfucker” Jones (Jamie Foxx), who agrees to become their murder consultant. The bad ass, whose nickname the film relishes repeating as often as possible, helps the lily-white softies hatch a plan to solve one another’s problems in a Strangers on a Train type plot.

Things don’t go exactly as planned, of course. The guys are totally inept and unsuited for a life of crime and stumble into all sorts of ridiculous shenanigans, including accidentally getting high on coke (particularly funny in the case of already squeaky-voiced Dale). It’s these misadventures, as scripted by Michael Markowitz, Jonathan Goldstein, and John Francis Daley (from television’s Bones, who also appears briefly) and directed by Seth Gordon that fuels the film and provides most of its ad hoc humor. Horrible Bosses is funny in a moment-to-moment way, if you ignore the fact that it doesn’t make that much sense. Why don’t these guys just quit their jobs? Why don’t they go to the police when things start veering out of control? But since it’s mid-summer and the theater was air-conditioned, I was happy to suspend my disbelief and go along for the ride.

It also helps that Bateman, Sudeikis and Day each do a superb job playing their usual character types (sardonic, smarmy and squirmy, respectively). But it’s the titular horrible bosses that keep the film on its rails. Spacey, adept at both comedy and drama, is like the film’s metronome, helping to keep titspacing in check. Aniston is terrific as the insane hottie with the frighteningly filthy mouth. The actress clearly relishes the opportunity to play against type and goes whole, dirty hog. Ferrell, too, has lots of fun in his Mel Grossman-esque prosthetics. If the outtakes that play over the end credits can be trusted, the balding, disgusting character would have run away with the whole movie if given a few more scenes. That is, if he could steal the spotlight away from Foxx and his hilarious character quirks (watch him drink with a straw).

Admittedly, there’s some very dark territory left unexplored by Gordon in Horrible Bosses. With the economy still struggling, there are sure to be many of us working for folks we’d rather see sleeping with the fishes. The fact that these three are just regular, honest Joes driven to extreme measures opens wide the door to more serious farce. It’s a door that Gordon politely–and perhaps smartly–closes and walks on by. After all, I’m not sure that this particular cast and this particular script could have handled those depths.

Let’s face it. This ain’t Office Space. But with a few standout performances, Horrible Bosses is a funny enough midsummer comedy. And as is often the case with bosses, sometimes good enough is good enough.

In the film, Hanks plays Larry Crowne, a perennial nice guy who works at a big box department store called UMart. As a nine-time employee of the month–who even takes the time to recycle the trash left behind in his store’s parking lot–he is caught completely off guard when given his pink slip. Despite his 10 good years with the company and his 20-year military service, he lacks the right stuff (read: a college degree) to move up the company ladder.

So, on the advice of his zany neighbors Lamar and B’Ella (Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson), who also sell him a motorized scooter to replace his gas-guzzler of a car, Larry embarks on a community college education. On his first day he meets the two women who will change his middle-aged life. The first is free-spirited and fashion-forward fellow scooter rider, Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw); the second, his speech professor, Mercedes Tainot (Ms. Roberts).

The prof is going through a mid-life quandary of her own. She’s an expert on the politics of Shakespeare, a class that she can’t get enough students enrolled in to be able to teach. So she’s stuck teaching an 8am speech class that students don’t take all that seriously. And she goes home every night to a developing alcohol addiction and a husband (Brian Cranston) who quit his job as a professor to become a “new media writer,” but actually spends all day checking out busty beauty porn.

It would seem that the fundamentally-good-but-unhappy pair were destined to meet cute. But, in spite of the fact that Larry and Mercedes see each other three mornings a week, it takes them nearly an hour of screen time to do so. Meanwhile, Larry gets a Pretty Woman-esque makeover from Talia and her pals in the scooter gang. And it turns out that a less dorky haircut, non-khaki pants, and a wallet chain (are those things still in style even on young dudes?) are just what he needs to scoop up the teacher babe.

It’s at about the halfway point of Larry Crowne that boy finally really meets girl, when he offers her a ride on his scooter after she’s been left behind at a bus stop by her jerky hubby. The following conversation ensues:

Mercedes: You do realize that we’re going so slow a cat could knock us over.

Larry: Well, this is the first time I’ve driven anyone but myself. I want to make sure everyone arrives safely.

It’s an apt metaphor for the pacing of Mr. Hanks’ second big-screen directorial outing, which he also co-writes with My Big Fat Greek Wedding scribe and star Nia Vardalos. This film galumphs along slowly, making you wonder where it might eventually be going. Will Larry and Talia have a misguided fling? Will Larry discover that he ‘s got a real head for business (sort of hinted at in his economics class taught by George Takei) and help turn Lamar’s running garage sale into a super-successful retail company? Will he ever stop wearing that ridiculous wallet chain? The only thing you know for sure is that he’ll end up with Mercedes. And you know that only because she’s age-appropriate and played by Julia Roberts.

Bumper-sticker wisdom and Aerosmith tunes would have us believe that falling in love is hard on the knees. It must be out of concern for the already osteoporotic bones of their older audience that Hanks and Vardalos skip right over having their romantic leads do any “falling.” So much time is spent on Larry getting wacky advice from Lamar, new clothes from Talia, and comically menacing looks from her boyfriend Dell (Wilmer Valderrama) that the love story comes down to one scooter ride and an awkard, desperate kiss that’s funny to watch but lacks an ounce of real heat.

I just don’t understand why the duo didn’t click. Usually, onscreen chemistry is only this bad in a case of clash of the egos, where neither actor likes each other as much as they like themselves. But if Hanks wriggling around in a storage unit in tighty-whiteys or Roberts’s clumsy physicality (and beautifully un-Botoxed face) are any indication, vanity was hardly the problem for these two mega-watt stars.

Hanks plays Larry Crowne with the affably bewildered charm and everyman good looks that he brings to many of his successful leading-man roles. Meanwhile, my affection for Ms. Roberts is no secret (hey, I even liked Eat Pray Love) and is actually enhanced by the fact that she successfully gets the shrewish part of this character’s personality just right. But as loveable as Hanks and Roberts (and by extension, Larry and Mercedes) are, they just don’t go together.

Sort of like wallet chains and 50-year olds.