This movie, based on the Firefly series, surrounds a psychic named River, who was imprisoned as the alliance tried to suppress her knowledge of certain events. Unfortunately her brother walked into the facility and broke her out. Along the way, they meet up with the crew of Serenity, who are naturally not friendly with the authorities, and thus begins the adventure.

The band of brigands aboard Serenity have no idea what secret River is holding, nor do they know what secret she herself is hiding – mostly because she doesn’t seem to know. What they do know is that they don’t really like the people she’s hiding from, so they don’t have a problem keeping River away from the people who want her, and that’s about all that matters.

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This animated (clay-mated?) film stars Wallace and his loyal dog Gromit, who as a team form Anti-Pesto Humane Pest Control, dedicated to keeping the vegetables safe from those who would eat them prior to the giant vegetable-growing contest, held annually on the gounds of Tottington Estate.

In practice, this means that they catch rabbits before they have a chance to eat people’s vegetables, but they don’t kill the rabbits. Instead, they keep them in pens beneath their house. That generally is okay, but now something has changed.

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Kat (Debra Messing) is fairly miserable. She’s been invited to a wedding and her ex will be there. Worse yet, she doesn’t have a date, so she does what any woman would do. She hires an escort. Yes, an escort.

Nick (Dermot Mulroney) will be her date. She pays him six thousand dollars and gives him a first-class plane ticket to London to show up and be wonderful, which she figures will make her ex insanely jealous, winning him back (or at least making him feel miserable, which is at least as good).

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Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey) wins a college bowl game for his team on the last play of the game, but unfortunately his leg doesn’t quite make it, getting twisted at an odd angle while his body goes the other way.

Six years later, he is working a 900 line in Las Vegas when he’s asked to work on the gambling line, and suddenly he’s noticed by a high-rolling New York personality (Al Pacino) with his own cable show and whisked off to the big time.

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A bunch of college kids are on a road trip and they decide to camp when a large truck pulls up and saturates their campground with its headlights. They don’t like that. The tough guy (Chad Michael Murray, who was better in Freaky Friday) throws a beer bottle and breaks a headlight. The truck leaves. Everyone goes to sleep until the next morning. Well, afternoon. They are college kids.

Then they realize that the fan belt on one of the cars is broken, so they need to go into town to get a replacement. That’s when things start to get a little more interesting.

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Right from the beginning, you can tell that this is different from the 1971 classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In fact, it’s actually more reminiscent of the 1989 version of Batman because of director Tim Burton’s influence. That’s not entirely a bad thing. Batman was a classic in its own right.

But this telling quickly diverges from the 1971 version while at times remaining faithful to that wonderful tale. If you’ve seen that one (and most of us have), you’ll recognize it just about everywhere. And while I’m a big fan of Johnny Depp, let’s face it – he’s no Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

Burton’s taste for the bizarre comes through in stellar fashion, and for the most part it works, but rather than Wilder’s childlike sense of wonder in the original, we get a bizarre psychosis here, and it where the original worked wonders, it just doesn’t work here at all.

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Everyone loves a good zombie movie. Unfortunately this isn’t one of them. It was okay, but I’ve seen many better.

In the future, it seems, the zombies are so prevalent that those who aren’t zombies are taking up residence in cities protected by natural defenses (rivers) and armed guards. They send the less fortunate (those who aren’t rich) out to raid cities for alcohol, cigars and leftover canned goods – but they don’t let them live inside their walled gardens, except to fight in arenas for entertainment.

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Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie star in this movie about two contract killers who are married to one another – only they don’t know it (at least at the outset).

They are simply two spouses who aren’t quite as happy in life as they could be, until one day when they are assigned the same target and while they do so, they actually interfere with the other’s plans.

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This epic takes us to the crusades, where we encounter a young blacksmith (Orlando Bloom, who seems to have a thing for acting in epics) just as he learns that a passing lord is his father.

The lord invites him to come on a crusade to Jerusalem with him, but he declines, opting to stay where he is, and that he does until the local priest comes to talk about his recently deceased wife. That’s when our young blacksmith spots his wife’s necklace on the priest and kills him, then promptly takes off after his father.

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This retelling of the 1953 classic has a big budget and a lot of computer effects, and in general does a very good job. Tom Cruise may not be my first choice for an action hero, but he doesn’t do too badly here. I think that’s probably because the tale is told by what’s happening around him and it doesn’t depend too much on what he’s doing.

Ray Ferrier (Cruise) is a New Jersey mechanic who seems to be fighting with life. His wife has moved on and his kids aren’t too far from doing the same. But this weekend they are staying with him, so perhaps something will change. When Ray tries to get his son Robbie Justin Chatwin to play a game of catch, the ball goes through the window instead. I guess it won’t be this weekend after all.

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