If you're not already a card-carrying member in the cult of Terrence Malick, I'm not sure that I'd use To the Wonder as a recruitment tool, as this slender wisp of a romantic drama represents both the director's simplest, yet strangely most complex work to date. Gone are the beautifully rendered period backdrops that defined Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World, as well as the grand cosmic questions that fueled his last, most divisive film, The Tree of Life. Instead, much like his debut feature, Badlands (recently re-issued in a must-own Criterion Blu-ray edition), Wonder is the small-scale story of two people in love, whose affair is destined to end badly. But where Badlands recounts a relatively straightforward narrative (for Malick, anyway), Wonder pushes his late-career trend towards abstraction and ellipticism well past what may be the breaking point for most viewers, even amongst his most devoted fans. It's not necessarily a difficult film to watch, but it does prove somewhat difficult to love.

I don't have much to say about the Evil Dead remake that's opening in theaters today. It's a film that Hollywood has been threatening to produce for years and finally did and the final result is... fine. Neither an epic fail nor a bold reimagining that tops the original, Evil Dead 2.0 is content to go about its business with minimal fuss and maximum gore for its slender 91-minute runtime. And I suppose that's all Sam Raimi -- who produced the film along with fellow Evil Dead veteran Bruce Campbell and personally handpicked its director, Fede Alvarez -- really wanted from this unnecessary remake of the 1981 bloodbath that launched his career: a movie that kept the brand name alive without taking any significant creative risks that might scare away mainstream audiences and studios. I walked out of the movie moderately entertained, but also wondering "Is that all there is?"

Is there a better director of opening sequences working right now than Danny Boyle? From the invigorating "Lust for Life"-scored chase scene that opens Trainspotting (a sequence that introduced a whole new generation to the pleasures of Iggy Pop and the dangers of heroin addiction) to Cillian Murphy's trek through a desolate, deserted London at the top of 28 Days Later to James Franco's preparations for his wilderness adventure in 127 Hours, Boyle seeks to command your attention from the very first frame. And even if the rest of the film fails to sustain the momentum and excitement of those initial minutes (a list that, for me at least, includes A Life Less Ordinary, Sunshine and -- Oscar be damned -- Slumdog Millionaire), the opening sequence often functions as an almost note-perfect mini-movie in and of itself. Boyle's latest picture, Trance, boasts yet another killer beginning, one that starts with a daring daylight auction house heist and ends with our ostensible hero, auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy), getting knocked upside the head by the ostensible villain, robbery ringleader Franck (Vincent Cassel). In its expert use of music, razor-sharp editing and overall propulsive energy, this sequence highlights in microcosm why Boyle is such a consistently exciting filmmaker... if only sometimes for ten to 15 minutes at a stretch.

Based on his two narrative features to date, Blue Valentine and now The Place Beyond the Pines, writer/director Derek Cianfrance is fascinated by consequences and the various ways in which a person's past actions inalterably shape the present and future for themselves and the people around them. In Valentine, this theme was explored through a narrative structure that bounced back and forth in time, contrasting the exciting rush of first love for its central couple (played by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling) with the pain and heartache generated by their failing marriage years later. Pines's timeline only moves in one direction -- forwards -- but it covers far more ground than Valentine, spanning almost 20 years in the lives of two upstate New York-based families whose fates become intertwined by an almost random moment of chance.

Stephanie Meyer's post-Twilight movie career begins today with the release of The Host, the Meyer-produced, Andrew Niccol-directed adaptation of the 2008 sci-fi novel she penned in between Twilight installments. We're sure you've got a... well, host of burning questions about the film and we're here with the answers.

When Paramount initially announced last year that they would be moving G.I. Joe: Retaliation -- the sequel to 2009's sort-of hit The Rise of Cobra (which earned $150 million domestically, but cost close to $200 million to make and market) -- from its mid-summer berth to the following March, the common assumption was that the studio was running from an impending flop. In hindsight though, the move qualifies as a stroke of genius. Facing a packed line-up of back-to-back blockbusters that included The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, Retaliation was in danger of getting lost in the summer shuffle. But now at the end of March -- with A Good Day to Die Hard in the rearview and Iron Man 3 over a month away -- it has the big-budget action movie sequel playing field to itself. So the movie's financial success is seemingly assured. It's creative success? Well... that's a different story. Before you too join the ranks of the millions of moviegoers screaming "Yo, Joe!" this weekend, here are five things to know about Retaliation.

Admittedly, I went into The Croods with a great deal of skepticism. After all, as a mom, I've been subjected to more than my fair share of Ice Age and Madagascar movies. So no matter how cute the little sloth may be (and Kristin Bell is probably gonna freak when she sees it), I wasn't exactly jumping for joy heading into the theater. But this movie won me over. It started out a little slow, but after they got to the gist of the plot, I was charmed by the actual storyline. Even though it was co-written and directed by Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders, I'm quite tempted to credit its quality to Sanders -- who made Lilo & Stitch -- and not the dude behind... Space Chimps.

It's been awhile since we've had a good old-fashioned blockbuster premise-off -- a duel between two high-concept, high-intensity action movies with the exact same premise. Who can forget the great Deep Impact vs. Armageddon asteroid-destroying-Earth battle of '98? (Winner: Armageddon by a country mile.) Or how about the epic Dante's Peak vs. Volcano exploding-volcano confrontation of '97? (Winner: Neither.) Well, this year we're getting a pair of flicks where the White House becomes the setting for a Die Hard-like game of cat-and-mouse between a terrorist organization that's seized control of the place and the lone Secret Service agent who takes it upon himself to stop them. The week before America celebrates its 237th birthday, moviegoers can watch this disturbing scenario play out in the Roland Emmerich-directed, Channing Tatum-starring White House Down, scheduled to hit theaters on June 28. But why wait 'til then when you can watch the Antoine Fuqua-directed, Gerard Butler starring Olympus Has Fallen this weekend? Well, here's one good reason -- Olympus is awful

As the driving creative force behind 30 Rock (and, to a certain extent, Saturday Night Live during her tenure as head writer) for its seven-season run, Tina Fey generally tried to cut against the television comedy grain, unafraid to chase after comedy that was offbeat, ambitious and downright weird, particularly for a network sitcom. Perhaps that's why Fey's feature film career has been, for the most part, so disappointing. Instead of letting her freak flag fly, she's pursued middle-of-the-road mainstream star vehicles, from the pregnancy-themed Baby Mama (which was more sitcom-y than 30 Rock), to the "zany" night-on-the-town adventure Date Night (which managed to waste the combined talents of Fey, Steve Carell, Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, James Franco) and now Admission, which feels like an American version of those refined (re: pleasantly dull) British comedies -- think Waking Ned Devine and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel -- that only people over 40 go and see. It's mostly harmless, but also pretty lifeless.

If you're anything like me, going into The Sapphires, you'll know embarrassingly little about the heartbreaking history of the Aboriginal Australians, and will mostly be interested in the film at the prospect of Motown music and Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd, Bridesmaids, Girls) -- and you'll leave a little bit better-educated, in tears and with about twelve different songs stuck in your head.