Someone tell me: What happened to David Fincher? When the director who brought us uber-dark, smart films such as Se7en, Fight Club and even The Game makes a sap-filled movie the likes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, you have to ask yourself that question. And the only answer I've been able to come up with is that he must have grown a heart. And, for Fincher, this is not a good thing.

There's always that conundrum for American-made, American-marketed films that depict something taking place in a foreign country. On one hand, it's ridiculous for the people in the film to be speaking English if they're in a non-English-speaking country like ... say, Germany. On the other hand, it would be hard to market said movie if it were in German with English subtitles.

Australia starts out every bit as magical and powerful and lovely as any movie epic should be -- more so, even, since it's directed by that master of capturing magic on film, Baz Luhrmann (who already has breathed fresh life into Shakespeare and musicals). And for about half of its 2-hour-and-45-minute run time (!), it maintains that magic. But then it sort of falls flat. It rebounds some, with some lovely moments, breathtaking scenery, and terrific acting. But it can't ever regain what was lost in that first half.

It's hard to judge Twilight like any other movie, for a number of reasons: First off, you have to consider the audience. It was sort of made for them, and if it appeals to them, it's a success, right? Then there's the buzz factor: How much would we like this movie if there were no buzz? Finally, there's the fact that it's technically an independent film that's been widened due to said buzz. If watched as an indie, the movie might make people feel very differently than it does in its current context. All of these elements are important when reviewing Twilight, so I'm trying to keep them all in mind when I say what I'm about to say.

Gus Van Sant has never been my favorite director, but I respect him as a filmmaker and a humanitarian. Case in point: Last Friday, I attended a charity screening in Portland, Oregon (where Van Sant and I both live) of his latest movie, Milk. Tickets ranged from around $30 to $75. The print was donated, though, so all of the money went to Outside In, which helps homeless youths and others in Portland. According to the organization's director, who helped introduce the film, this is the fourth premiere Van Sant has donated to the organization. Pretty generous, and a great cause. This time, not only did Van Sant speak, but he also got James Franco to miss his classes at NYU to attend and speak at the function. It was a very cool event, and well worth the admission price. (Photographic evidence.) But I know what everyone is wondering: How was the movie?

When I found my seat at the advance screening for Quantum of Solace (well, relatively advance -- the Brits exercised their Queen-granted right to see it two weeks ago) I was warmly greeted by my neighbors, two New Yorkers who were fans of all things Bond. One had sat in Connery's original Aston Martin DB5 the week Goldfinger came out; the other had seen nearly half of the Bond title song musicians, including Tom Jones and Paul McCartney, perform their Bond songs live. Both were excited for the new film, although I was surprised at how little of the media blitz they had been subject to. The music lover was a fan of the White Stripes, but he hadn't heard the Jack White-Alicia Keys title track, "Another Way to Die." The other had loved the stunts he'd seen in the commercials, but he hadn't read anything about all the injuries Daniel Craig acquired doing them. Part of me wished I was going into it as spoiler-free as they were, but the rest of me didn't care -- after the wake-up call that was Casino Royale, I was just looking forward to more brutal violence, more Dame Judi Dench and more shots of Mr. Craig's dreamy blue eyes.

You could say that Judd Apatow and his cadre of actor/writer/producer/director friends have raised the bar for testosterone-fueled juvenilia. To some degree, we've come a long way from the Farrelly brothers and even the Kevin Smiths of the world, inasmuch as you can elevate dick jokes and nerd references to a slightly higher level. Perhaps because of his ubiquity, Apatow's particular breed of humor has been the Status quo for that specific genre for the last several years, and therefore most of us have learned to expect that much, but no more.

You know you're in for a mind-bendy metapalooza when you go to see a Charlie Kaufman movie. Since capturing the hearts of critics with his dizzying dark comedy Being John Malkovich nearly a decade ago, Kaufman has been fairly consistent in his subject matter, bringing his distinctly dreamy surrealism to meditations on love, identity, art, fame and mortality. His latest, Synecdoche, New York, is a continuation of this odyssey, though infinitely bleaker and, if possible, even more complex to unravel than his previous offerings. As a friend put it perfectly when we left the two-hours-plus screening, by comparison it makes Adaptation seem like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Director Ridley Scott's latest, a jet-setting espionage thriller set in the thick of the current Middle Eastern conflicts, is many things. Sometimes it's an action movie, sometimes it's a political movie, at times it's a workplace dramedy -- the boss/employee tension between Russell Crowe's and Leonardo DiCaprio's CIA agent characters is surprisingly relatable, with the two playing their own game of Spy vs. Spy throughout the film. It dips its toes in the waters of moral complexity, but doesn't stay there very long, and it even tries to find time to tell a love story, but doesn't stay there very long, either. The film would feel confused, but the storytelling is not directionless, per se -- more ambitious, really, and I think it tries much harder than most Hollywood films on the subject not to take a side on the issue. It opens with the W.H. Auden quote, "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return." And that's exactly what happens throughout the story. We're evil. They're evil. Our allies in the Middle East desperately trying to hold on to their wealth are evil. And the people who aren't evil are the ones who suffer most.

Damn it all, Nicholas Sparks! I told myself if I cried at your eighteen-hanky tearjerk bonanza I would shoot myself in the face. Well consider me dead, mkah? The lesson I learned the hard way is that you don't go into a movie like Nights in Rodanthe expecting it to be anything other than what it is -- a sappy, sad-sack chick-flick that'll have you weeping by the time the credits roll. Writer Nicholas Sparks might very well be the master of this particular strain of movie, something I dubbed the SPOILER ALERT "bone-n-croak" because there's a love story, the requisite "romantic" love scene involving a painfully slow disrobing sequence and some sort of tragic(-ish) death. If you've seen of Sparks' other works (A Walk to [sob!] Remember, The Notebook), you know exactly what I'm talking about.