Highlights from the 20th annual Philadelphia Film Festival:    "Streets" This local, no-budget production, directed by Jamal Hill, can't help but earn comparisons to "The Wire," and not only because its biggest name is the guy who played Poot, the fourth banana in the Barksdale gang in Season 1. It's not quite up to "The Wire," but "Streets" makes fine use of local locations and even sports a nifty opening theme that samples the "In West Philadelphia..." from the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme. (No release date set.)   "The Artist" The best film I've seen so far at the festival — and one of …

I'll admit it—I was skeptical about the idea of a Moneyball film adaptation. When I first heard about the idea, I think I mockingly dubbed it "On Base Percentage: The Movie." Sure, Michael Lewis' 2003 bestseller—about Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and how he used proprietary statistical analysis to overcome a miniscule team payroll—is a great and important book that tells a fascinating story. Cinematic, however, is not a word that comes to mind. The Social Network proved that a movie about data-crunching and business strategy could be exciting, and Moneyball continues the …

Imagine the swine flu epidemic of a few years ago, only five times more deadly and 20 times more contagious, and you have Contagion, a new Steven Soderbergh-directed medical thriller. The film, filmed all over the world at a $60 million budget, gets off to a very strong start, but eventually gets bogged down in questionable plotting and weak characterization. Featuring, among others, all three leads of The Talented Mr. Ripley, Contagion certainly isn't lacking for star power. Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow are a married couple in Minnesota, with Kate Winslet playing a Centers for Disease …

When I traveled to Israel in high school for a two-month education program, our instructor was a bearded, muscular Brooklyn-born badass who had served in the nation's wars and participated in numerous activities on behalf of the state of Israel in the years since. One of these, he used to say, was a stint in South America in the 1970s "hunting Nazis." He was never especially clear about whether that meant rounding up Nazis for trial or actually shooting them. The Debt, a new thriller about Israeli Mossad agents of similar era and vocation, turns on that very question. A remake of an Israeli …

Here, right at the end of August, comes the most disjointed, discombobulated movie of the summer. Our Idiot Brother wastes a cast of very talented comedic performers by giving them just about nothing funny to do and sticking them in a plot in which every character is a moron, a moral monster or both. A super-dark indie family drama disguised as a comedy, the film borrows the plot of the far superior Paul Thomas Anderson/Adam Sandler movie Punch Drunk Love. A stoner hippie layabout (Paul Rudd) is the black sheep of a family that includes his three sisters (Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer and …

The original 1982 Conan the Barbarian is perhaps best known for the line in which Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan is asked, "What is the best in life?" He answers, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women." The new 3-D remake, while not lacking for lamentations from women or anybody else, primarily concentrates on the "crush your enemies" part, with heads, eyes, noses, arms and hands being crushed or severed throughout its running time. The film ultimately fails because it can't make all of that gore in any way interesting. Billed as a more …

Kathryn Stockett's popular 2009 novel The Help arrives this week with a faithful and very affecting big-screen adaptation. It's simplistic at times, and flirts with manipulation, but it's also a deeply touching and well-acted film. Set in early 1960s Mississippi, The Help tells the story of African-American maids who care for the children and homes of wealthy white families, encountering horrible cruelty and racism, even a century after the Civil War and a decade after Brown versus Board of Education. Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) are the two primary maids, while the …

Here's one of the stranger movies of the year — an R-rated, raunchy, violent and very funny comedy, apparently based on a real-life case that didn't end up all that funny. 30 Minutes or Less was directed by Ruben Fleischer, best known for Zombieland, and brings much of the same combination of anarchic action comedy, '80s movie nostalgia and Jesse Eisenberg. This is no comedy classic, but it delivers plenty of laughs, thanks to a witty script and no less than five very hilarious performances. The plot concerns a couple of idiots (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) who, in a laughably intricate …

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a delightful surprise. Here's a lively, well-acted, deeply honest look at love, family and romance. If you've seen a movie in the past six months, you've almost certainly seen the movie's trailer—I know I've seen it dozens of times. The movie is not only much better than the mediocre preview would indicate, but doesn't end nearly as predictably as you may have thought. Steve Carrell stars as a suburban dad whose wife (Julianne Moore) confesses in the film's first scene that she's had an affair (with co-worker Kevin Bacon) and wants to leave him. Fans of Robert Altman's …

Captain America: The First Avenger is a generally mediocre superhero film with a few flashes of greatness appearing throughout. It cements Chris Evans as a star, but don't expect to remember anything about it after you leave the theater.  Based on a Marvel Comics series that goes all the way back to World War II, and has survived in various comic and cartoon incarnations since, the movie goes through the general motions of the origin story leading into the hero's first adventure. The movie was directed by Spielberg/Lucas protege Joe Johnston, best known for The Rocketeer, October Sky and the …

After 10 years, eight films, 20 hours of screen time and global box office well into the billions, the Harry Potter franchise at last comes to a close with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2. The film is a worthy conclusion to the series, providing numerous worthwhile payoffs to J.K. Rowling's wizard saga. While most of the movies of the Potter series have comprised a longer period of time, the bulk of Deathly Hallows - Part 2 takes place over one long night. Set at Hogwarts, the film builds toward Harry Potter's (Daniel Radcliffe) final confrontation with Lord Voldemort (Ralph …

Horrible Bosses takes a thin premise and milks it for all its worth, riding a witty script and super-strong cast to comedic glory. Sure, just about every character in the movie is cartoonish, and the script is full of glaring logical lapses, but the performances and jokes are all uniformly solid. Other than Bridesmaids, it's the funniest movie of the year (so far). The plot is yet another itineration of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and its 1980s comedy remake Throw Momma From the Train—both mentioned by name, just as the latter namechecked the former—filtered through Great Recession …

Larry Crowne is one of the year's stranger movies—the first picture in years directed by one of Hollywood's most beloved people, yet far below the standard that he usually brings to his work. It's got some lively moments, but mostly just sits there on screen. The film is the first Tom Hanks has directed since That Thing You Do! 15 years ago, and the first time he's ever both directed and starred in a film. Larry Crowne sounds from its plot description like an Up in the Air-style meditation on economic anxiety and unemployment, but instead aims more at being a quirky character study and …

On Pixar's 12th film, on its 25th anniversary, the vaunted animation studio has finally released its first true disaster, Cars 2. Sure, the kids will love it, but the movie totally fails to understand what was good about the first film, or what's great about Pixar itself. The studio is coming off one of its best stretches—Up and Toy Story 3 have both been instant classics—while the studio's signature director, John Lasseter, is back for the first time in several years, as well. But Cars 2 has the feel of a desperate cash-in in a way that neither Toy Story sequel ever did. Cars 2 is the first …

While 2012 will bring new movies featuring the Big Three of American superheroes—Superman, Batman and Spider-Man—as well as the years-in-the-works Avengers film, we have to make do this summer with some of the second string, including Thor, Captain America, and now The Green Lantern. The movie's mythology is convoluted, it takes more than a full hour to get going, and (par for the course this summer) there was no reason for it to be in 3-D. But The Green Lantern redeems itself with a killer third act, taking advantage of a strong cast and a director who knows what he's doing. A DC Comics …

The world's most reclusive filmmaker has made the year's most ambitious and far-reaching film. It's Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, and while it doesn't come together perfectly, it's got amazing ideas and contains some of the best filmmaking in memory. The famously not-prolific Malick, making just the fifth film in his nearly 40-year career, has made his answer to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey—a film scored with established classical music that starts literally at the beginning of time before settling into its primary plot and reaching an opaque, mystical conclusion that will …

The screenplay of The Hangover Part II is credited to director Todd Phillips, along with Scot Armstrong and Craig Mazin. But you'll never convince me that they actually wrote a new script—they surely just took the original and made a few minor alterations. Coming almost exactly two years after the sleeper hit, the sequel to The Hangover gives audiences exactly what they likely want: more of the same. Hangover II tells the same story, following all the same beats and hitting all the same marks as The Hangover did. There are still a whole lot of laughs, but the attempts to go wilder and more …

There are going to be a whole lot of Lincoln movies coming out in the next couple of years, from Steven Spielberg's Team of Rivals adaptation to the intriguing sounding Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. But the Abe-a-thon gets off to a weak start with Robert Redford's The Conspirator, which is probably the most bored I've been at the movies this year. I didn't think it was possible to make a boring movie about a presidential assassination, but The Conspirator manages the task. The film wants to be an historical epic with themes relevant to the present day, but in reality, it's an overly talky …

The original The Fast and the Furious came out in 2001, and the new Fast Five, its fourth sequel, is very much in love with things that were huge that year: Vin Diesel, The Rock, Ludacris, super-sized Hummer vehicles, and a certain other movie that arrived in 2001.Fast Five is indeed a nostalgia exercise, but a surprisingly effective one. Sure, the plot, dialogue and acting are as silly as usual. But buoyed by a sparkling Rio setting and an awesomely staged third-act action setpiece, Fast Five is the series' best outing since the original. The Furious franchise, built on fast cars and the …

Morgan Spurlock's new documentary "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" has a great deal in common with the film that put Spurlock on the map, 2004's “Super Size Me.” In both, Spurlock has one point to make — a point that's crushingly obvious and not particularly brave, shocking or controversial — and spends the entire movie making it over and over again. Just as "Super Size Me" made the earth-shattering case that eating every meal at McDonalds is bad for your health, “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” tackles the world of product placement in movies and TV shows, and the prevalence of advertising …