Suddenly, it's 1979, when Steven Spielberg was the kid with the magic touch, and science fiction movies invested their alien encounters with emotional uplift. Super 8, the J.J. Abrams creature feature set in that more innocent time and produced by Spielberg — and directly inspired by the young master's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — finished first at the North American box office with a $37 million opening weekend, according to early ...

The hardest movies to review are the ones you respect and admire but don't love and also — and this is the crucial part — aren't angered by. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful is just that sort of film. The story of Uxbal , a single father with terminal prostate cancer and the burden of a life without stability, is soulful, tragic and made with loving care. But it's also so gloomy that you're not sure who ...

Oh, sweet Jesus, that nice couple Kate and Micah are about to go to sleep again! But they already suspect that their house is haunted. Micah has propped up his video camera in their bedroom, to record any unusual phenomena, so they know what awful thing happened last night, while they were sleeping. The bedroom door moved a couple inches, and then... moved back! Big hairy deal, say cynics who've been bred on gross-out horror movies. Show us heads ...

"Doctor, I have this strange dream — that every three years there's a movie about some guy who has a strange dream about people who die in some awful calamity — and that he acts on the dream by saving his friends, who then begin dying in grotesque ways — and that, each time, it's really the same movie, just with a different calamity each time — and, this is the weirdest part, large numbers of moviegoers keep paying ...

Landing in stores October, Windows 7 is sparking a surprisingly heated debate (in our forums, at least) on whether or not upgrading from XP is a good idea. If you're in the "nay" camp, we're going to lay out seven reasons why you should consider switching your stance to "yay." When scanning our list, we politely encourage you to ask yourself, "Do I really want to continue using an eight-year-old operating system" Followed by "Don't I deserve better" Because no ...

While Hurricane Gustav was chewing up Cuba and storming toward Louisiana, the screen of the Venice Film Festival's Sala Grande was showing a very sweet tsunami. In the animated movie Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, the swelling waves take the form of dolphins, and when a Japanese coastal village gets submerged no one is killed or hurt — just amusingly displaced. The rising up of the marine world is not insurrection against humanity but gently cautionary ...

In her first television interview since Mel Gibson went public with their relationship in April, his girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, made it clear to CNN: "I'd like to be known for my music." Still, the 39-year-old singer was willing to talk about her beau and her pregnancy, as well as her new album, "Beautiful Heartache." "Beautiful Heartache" was released to iTunes on July 23 by Icon Distribution, Gibson's company, which up until now has handled only soundtracks for his ...

John Hughes, the producer, writer and director whose 1980s films such as "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club" and "Some Kind of Wonderful" offered a sharp-eyed look at teenagers and their social habits, has died, according to a statement from his representative. He was 59. Hughes died of a heart attack while taking a morning walk in Manhattan, according to the statement. Hughes, who was also a prolific screenwriter and producer, was at his peak in the 1980s, when his films ...

Draco Malfoy and the slimy kids of Slytherin couldn't have wreaked more damage on Harry Potter than a bunch of commando guinea pigs did to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this weekend. G-Force, the live-action and CGI action comedy, earned $32.2 million this weekend at the North American box office, besting the $30 million take of the sixth Potter film, according to the usual movie-studio estimates of the weekend frame. Final numbers are posted Monday. G-Force was ...

Back in the days of Bogart and Bergman, Hepburn and Tracy, it was said that people learned how to fall in love -- how to kiss, beguile, or just hold hands -- by watching the people in the movies. Today, anyone eager for tips on how to find, and woo, the perfect mate hardly needs to look to Hollywood. Amorous instruction is everywhere -- on reality shows; in hipper-than-thou men's and women's magazines; in music videos and stand-up ...