As with most any other genre, pitching a thriller seems to go that much more swimmingly once one finds an ideal blockbuster reference point with which to do half of the leg work. It's 'Die Hard meets this', 'Speed on a that', and, when in doubt, just say the damn thing is 'Hitchcockian'.

Post-2001, the likes of TV's '24' and 'Sleeper Cell', and film's Jason Bourne franchise, have tapped into both our political climate and pop culture zeitgeist, into a globe-trotting, gun-toting fear of the here and there and always now. Jeffrey Nachmanoff's Traitor feels like the first film that has itself been directly spawned in the wake of those successes, as opposed to merely being bolstered by it, and while it may overtake, say, Vantage Point in terms of plausible plotting and worldly knowledge, it remains a film that is good enough to grasp the bar and yet not quite enough to raise it.

Last year I saw Gracie, a movie about a teenage girl who wants to play high-school soccer in the late 1970s, when the game was considered a males-only sport in America, and faces a lot of opposition from her school. I finished my review with the line, "If it were football, would we be agreeing more with Gracie's opponents?" The Longshots gives us the opportunity to consider that question. Can we sympathize with, and cheer on, a girl who wants to succeed as a quarterback in an all-boys' football league? The answer is yes, because The Longshots focuses on characters and personal relationships and as a result, feels richer and more satisfying than the standard sports-genre film.

The story is simple and except for the girl-quarterback angle, old-fashioned in a Capra-esque way. Jasmine (Keke Palmer) is a middle-school loner and misfit in a small town hit by economic troubles. Her mom Claire (Tasha Smith) has to work longer hours at the diner -- dad ditched town and family several years ago -- and Jasmine is still too young to be left alone after school. So Claire pleads, nags and finally bribes her husband's brother Curtis (Ice Cube), an unemployed ex-football player, to keep an eye on his niece Jasmine. Of course they can't stand each other at first, but eventually Curtis discovers that Jasmine has an excellent throwing arm and teaches her how to be a quarterback. Meanwhile, the town's playground football team is languishing, and one thing they're missing is a decent quarterback, sooo ...

A brief, sum-it-all-up-in-one-line description of The House Bunny would probably go something like this: Imagine if a sequel to Legally Blonde and a sequel to Clueless had a child and it was adopted by a sequel to Revenge of the Nerds. That's The House Bunny. Thankfully, a strong and very funny performance from Anna Faris -- as well as decent-enough turns from Emma Stone and Kat Dennings -- save this late summer slacker from flunking out of theaters completely. It's familiar, it doesn't make you work for a laugh and, heck, for some it might be a nice way to cap off a long, dark, foul-mouthed summer full of superheroes, stoners and sequels.

To Shelley Darlingson (Faris), living in the Playboy Mansion is a fairytale come true. Sure, she's not a centerfold ... yet ... and was only featured in a few pictorials (Girls with GEDs, Girls with Charlie Sheen), but that doesn't stop her from bringing half-naked cheer and joy to anyone within shouting distance. Things take a turn for the worse, however, when Shelley's told that Hef doesn't want her in the mansion anymore -- that 27 is, like, 59 in Bunny years. With nowhere to go, a suitcase full of skimpy outfits and the rusty, beaten-up station wagon she arrived in, Shelley wanders the streets until eventually she stumbles upon a whole bunch of mansions that look just like home ... only they're fraternity and sorority houses ... but good ol' Shelley don't know the difference.

Medical science tells us that there's a portion of the brain called the R-complex that, nestled low and close to the spinal cord, governs simple, automatic brain functions like respiration and reflex and heart rate; other outlying, larger brain structures cover language, culture, memory and art. I mention this because Death Race, writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson's re-visitation of the 1975 trash-classic Death Race 2000, is wholly, entirely and perfectly designed to appeal to the R-complex portion of your brain. Death Race roars, rages and races down the track, all velocity and visceral violence, unencumbered by logic, sense, reason or dignity. My more evolved brain structures kept objecting to Death Race's more ludicrous contortions as it whipped around its curves, but my R-complex didn't want to hear the high-pitched whining voice of logic and reason; it simply grunted, settled into a soft cushion of popcorn topping and said "Shut up, bigger brain; bald man who talk cool killing now."

(We're re-posting our CineVegas review of The Rocker to coincide with the film's theatrical release today)

I like the premise of The Rocker so much -- middle-aged wannabe rock star insinuates himself into his teenage nephew's band -- that I'm inclined to go easy on it solely out of good will. It's likable enough, a lightweight rock 'n' roll comedy punctuated by several belly laughs -- but those laughs are all in response to the one-liners, and mostly from one minor character (more on that later). The story, the central personalities, and the uninspired slapstick are bland.

The title wannabe is Robert "Fish" Fishman, played by Rainn Wilson (of TV's The Office) in his first major film role. Fish was the drummer for Vesuvius, a mid-'80s heavy-metal band, but was kicked out on the eve of the group's success. Now, two decades later, Vesuvius is huge and Fish is a bitter has-been (or, rather, never-was).

In a marketplace of increasingly generic titles and often disingenuous marketing, the horror genre tends to bring a certain honesty to the table. Think about it: the words 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2' can simply never paint as vivid a mental picture as, say, 'Zombie Strippers'. These offerings may be comparatively lower in brow and budget, and no, not for all tastes, but with a film like that -- a title like that -- or Evil Aliens, or Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, for that matter, what-you-see-is-what-you-get chutzpah is on their side, and while that quality might not alone do the trick when it comes to their ultimate entertainment value, it certainly doesn't do any harm.

That said, like those films (well, okay, maybe not that Pants one), Jack Brooks may not quite be the cult classic in the making that it so clearly sets out to be, but at least its influences and intent are always worn plainly upon its blood-stained sleeve.

It's too bad that more movies don't have the courage to explore faith and spirituality in a direct way; studios are usually too worried about appealing to all religions -- and all pocketbooks -- to be very specific about the subject. The other reason is that it's difficult for Hollywood movies to wrap up their neat, bow-tie happy endings with everything resolved, since the idea of faith is based on lack of proof, lack of finality. One of my favorite movies is Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, which uses an unconventional, off-kilter visual scheme to document some exciting, endlessly fascinating arguments: which side is God on and what does He really want with us? The new Henry Poole Is Here bucks the trend with the appearance of a "miracle" in the life of its ordinary, everyday character. Does it raise any interesting, life-changing questions? Sadly, no. The film is too bored and lackadaisical with its subject to change much of anything. It's too uninspired to be inspirational.

Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) is a man with "movie disease." This means that he's going to die, and he'll have absolutely no symptoms until he does. Sometimes "movie disease" comes with a cough, but not this time. Sometimes "movie disease" has a name, like "brain cloud," but not this time. In preparation for the dark day, Henry buys a house in his old neighborhood, loads up on booze, doughnuts and pizza and waits. Meanwhile, his nosy neighbor Esperanza (Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza, from Babel) brings him tamales and pokes around his backyard. (Her late boyfriend used to live in the same house.) She notices that a badly done stucco job has produced a water stain, and that the water stain looks a bit like a familiar guy with a beard. The picture even produces a drop of blood.

With Toy Story (1995), a studio called Pixar blew the lid off of animated movies as we knew them. Thirteen years later, the other studios have yet to even approach that early level of excellence, let alone match the advancements Pixar has made since. Oddly similar to the most recent clunker Space Chimps, the new Fly Me to the Moon looked infinitely more promising in that it was based on an actual idea: the 1969 Apollo 11 mission as seen through the eyes of three stowaway flies -- in 3D! But sadly it proves itself as technically dull and as creatively stifled as Space Chimps as well as nearly every other non-Pixar movie.

After a totally useless, noisy black-and-white prologue, we get a very cool establishing shot. The camera flows smoothly through the back lots behind Cape Canaveral in Florida. It swoops into a patch of dirt and a tangle of weeds, through some bits of discarded junk, to the world where our little flies live (like humans, in little dollhouses). During this and other traveling sequences, the 3D works beautifully, engulfing us comfortably in this tiny world. But as soon as we meet the characters, the movie starts to sputter. In real life, houseflies can zip across the kitchen pretty darn fast relative to their size, but these flies drift lethargically from place to place, and the movie bogs down in their lackadaisical pace.

I felt, after seeing Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the way I do after I've been to an excellent tapas restaurant; I'd been presented with a series of small moments of flavor and texture and presentation, some more pleasant than others, and while the overall experience didn't add up to a full meal, it was still a sincere pleasure. Allen's been globetrotting lately -- although you can suggest that's been motivated less by some muse of artistic inspiration than by the equally beguiling, if less dignified, seductress of international financing. After several films set in London, Allen's now in Barcelona, Spain, as recently-graduated friends Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are taking some time to see the world before going back to America and futures as bright and unfixed as a sunlit fogbank.

Staying with family friends Mark and Judy Nash (Kevin Dunn and Patricia Clarkson), Vicky and Cristina take in the sights and experiences of Barcelona. Cristina's able to lose herself in the moment; for Vicky, each summer day's tempered by the certainty that summer will soon end. But one night after an art gallery showing, at an appropriately bohemian venue, Vicky and Cristina are approached by the painter whose work they've just seen, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who proposes they join him as he flies to a small town so they might spend the weekend making love. Vicky's appalled; Cristina's intrigued; Juan Antonio is a laid-back seducer with a ready counter-argument to every objection: "Life is long; life is dull; life is full of pain." Why not have a little fun? It's not enough to talk the girls into agreeing to go to bed with him, but it is enough to get them on-board the plane. ...

When a film called Mirrors opens with a man fleeing desperately from said objects, it doesn't bode all that well. When that individual soon falls victim to a grisly demise at the sight of them, well, there's something to be said for the fact that there is ultimately nothing to see in Mirrors that is worth grabbing something sharp over. Unfortunately, there is also nothing that you probably haven't seen before in The Ring, The Grudge, or any number of exhaustingly similar American remakes of Asian spook stories.

And what a shame that we find ourselves having to associate the likes of Alexandre Aja with lackluster horror. Well, to be more accurate, luster is just about all he has to offer here, a slick sheen on a stale story. It's nice to have a legitimately menacing score in between shameless jolts!, and if we're to be treated to the same 'gotcha!' shots with depressing frequency, at least the lighting and lensing bring an equal amount of polish to the proceedings. Who knows: With enough technical prowess at play, maybe Aja can get someone to mistake this film for Shinola after all.