Uplifting. Heartwarming. Schmaltzy but effective. Watching "The Blind Side," I felt my emotions being stage-managed, but once or twice I got something in my eye. It's inspired by a feel-good true story of interracial adoption and gridiron glory. The project could have been designed by scientists synthesizing the crowd-pleasing-movie genome. Bullock + football + Kumbaya = Ka-ching!

http://www.startribune.com

"Quirky." "Eccentric." "Whimsical." Critics trot out the synonyms for "playful" and "odd" when talking about Wes Anderson. A 40-year-old director of wistful character comedies peopled with lovable screwballs - "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" - he brings it all on himself, inviting the label "patron saint of moody hipster comedies" that Newsweek hangs on him.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/

HONG KONG A prominent mainland Chinese director banned by Beijing from making movies brought his new gay romance film to Hong Kong on Friday for what is likely the last of a handful of screenings on his home soil.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE, Ohio An eastern Ohio police chief accused of breaking into the home of the woman who carried twins for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick says he never discussed selling items from the home.

http://www.wtov9.com

In a sense, the soldiers at the center of "The Messenger" are engaged in house-to-house combat. Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) and Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) are unwelcome visitors, wary of what might detonate behind the next door.

http://www.startribune.com

BEIJING When the apocalypse comes, China will save the world.

ATLANTA Wesley Snipes' attorneys asked a federal appeals court Friday to review an "unreasonable" three-year prison sentence for the film star, who was convicted a year ago on federal tax charges.

In Japan, where the blades are shiny and sharp and if the fake blood isn't staining the lens, you're not trying hard enough, there' s a rich tradition of sword-and-splatter pictures. That's the tradition Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" leaned on, and it's the foundation of "Ninja Assassin," a more run-of-the-mill Hollywood ninja movie with "Matrix" ties.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/

Even by the sadistic standards of Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville"), "Antichrist" is a unique form of cruel and unusual punishment: an unrelenting orgy of graphic sex, violence and cynicism that also manages to be wildly pretentious.

http://www.star-telegram.com

He swaggered, an outsize personality who filled a room figuratively decades before he did it literally.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/

Opening Wednesday:

http://www.herald.com/

NEW YORK "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" has set a box-office record for midnight screenings.

The end, when it comes, may look a lot like this - grey skies shrouding the ash-covered ruins of civilization.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" is a dead-on adaptation of the Stephenie Meyer book. That's not necessarily a good thing, because the second novel in the romantic vampire series is considered by some fans to be the weakest of the four stories.

http://www.fresnobee.com/

LOS ANGELES - Despite her lofty Hollywood status, Sandra Bullock's ready to take a break from acting.

http://www.fresnobee.com/

VIENNA Tom Cruise has arrived in the Austrian city of Salzburg to shoot scenes for the new action comedy "Knight & Day."

The title of Adam Goldberg's new movie is intriguing: "(Untitled)" really doesn't have one.

http://www.herald.com/

Apparently few things are as entertaining as watching the Earth shake itself to pieces.

http://www.kansascity.com

WASHINGTON As moviegoers across the nation watched the end of the world with the opening of "2012" last week, news of Earth's demise spread quickly across the Web. Scientists, fed up with the misleading prophecies, quickly set the record straight with their own series of articles and a YouTube video.

http://tinyurl.com/dnj5wd