On principle, when a movie ends I always stay 'til after the credits roll and the theater turns the lights back on. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised more people don't and that this is something I even need to address. More often than not, I've seen snippets of bonus features that give me some sense that I didn't totally waste my time -- the stinger at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes was well worth the wait.

When I told my mother I had seen this movie, she groaned and asked me if I fell asleep during it. I explained that I loved Jane Eyre in all its incarnations (well, excepting the mediocre musical) and then started rambling about The Wide Sargasso Sea and The Eyre Affair and wondering how my mother could think a story that had fire and a crazy person living in an attic could possibly be boring. Then we decided to agree to disagree. If you are siding with my mother? Don't bother with this movie. In fact, stay far away, because it is beautiful, but slowly and methodically paced (I think in quite an effective way) and that will likely put you to sleep as soon as you watch a scene with limited talking for a good five minutes. If you, like me, are a fan of the Charlotte Bronte work, I think this film, while arguably not the most necessary thing in the entire world, is a well-done adaptation of the source material.

I love how inaccurate the definitions "comedy" and "drama" can be. Most films have both, and usually more of one than another, but a good number of them are essentially dramedies, either due to a calculated balance or an inability to commit. (For instance, The Tourist, ostensibly an action thriller, was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical, presumably due to Depp's lackadaisical commitment to the laughably clichéd storyline.) So when I saw that Paul Giamatti had been nominated for a Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for Barney's Version, I just knew that this wouldn't be a pure comedy -- despite the trailer's focus on a Heartbreak Kid-style plot point, it also showed some sadly romantic longing. But I had no idea how depressing things would get, since the movie pretty much abandons comedy halfway through, and the romance never lasts.

Depending on which commercials you've seen for this movie, you may not realize that Anne Hathaway's character has early-onset Parkinson's disease. It's not a secret, except in the sense that the studio apparently didn't want to scare away audiences -- she mentions it the first time we meet her, and it's a constant talking point throughout the film. But that's only one of three different movies going on here. The second movie is an insider's look at the drug industry, specifically the tactics used by drug reps to get their drugs into doctors' hands, or at least their eyeline. And the third movie is a raunchy Judd Apatow comedy. Any two of those movies would have been plenty, but three causes way too many tonal shifts, and it gets a little hard to figure out how you're supposed to be feeling at any given time.

Now that director Guillermo Del Toro is no longer directing The Hobbit, a mad search is on to find the new director, both by the studio and by the press, who have thrown out the names of every geek-friendly genre director from Abrams to Raimi. But why does the director have to be known for the fantasy and sci-fi genre? After all, the last three directors of the Harry Potter franchise were virtual strangers to the fantasy film world before they signed on to their installments, and they've been incredibly successful, each with their own distinctive voice. While we aren't going to scour the film festivals to find the next Peter Jackson, there are plenty of established directors who aren't known for swords and sorcery, but might be willing to tackle such an important work of literature.

Apparently, everything we know about Robin Hood is wrong, or so Ridley Scott would have us believe. Sure, there are hundreds of different versions of the Robin Hood myth, and Scott himself recently directed a documentary on the myth's origins, but Scott's feature-film take introduces us to a completely different Robin, one with a different last name and a different path to folk-hero status. And you know what? I like this one better.

Take a classic, family-friendly film property and add a fan-favorite director, an iconic movie star and 3-D glasses, and you've apparently got a smash hit on your hands. Alice in Wonderland, the latest funhouse-mirror remake by director Tim Burton, opened to $116 million at the box office, the sixth biggest opening of all time, helping make it the biggest March opening ever in the U.S. That beats Burton's previous biggest opening, for Planet of the Apes ($68.5 million), and considering how much better this movie is than Apes, we hope it will outgross it in the long run, as well. Another $94 million from overseas placed it at number 14 on the list of biggest worldwide openings, so things are looking good there, too.

Cementing his love of the offbeat, Tim Burton -- along with his 9 partner Timur Bekmambetov -- has announced that he will produce a film adaptation of the just-released book Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. The screenplay will be written by the book's author, Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is also being made into a movie (albeit one directed by Natalie Portman). While former presidents have been used as great comedic devices in past films, (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Dick), rarely do their biopics stray too far from the recorded histories. We'd love to see more movies like this, ones that take our favorite historical figures and have them do more exciting stuff than attend state dinners. Here are a few suggestions for former presidents.

It could be argued that many of Martin Scorsese's most famous characters are raving lunatics. Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. Jake La Motta from Raging Bull. Jimmy Conway from Goodfellas. Max Cady from Cape Fear. Basically, anybody played by Robert De Niro. I kept hoping for a De Niro cameo in the prison for the criminally insane that provides the setting for Scorsese's latest movie, but alas, no. I had to make do with other cameos, namely several all-too-short appearances by the amazing cast of character actors Scorsese has assembled to populate the 1950s nightmare world he's created. The story itself is a real potboiler, as well, but the plot is less important than the look of the film and the (often brief) performances Scorsese gets from his cast, not to mention the startling fact that Max Von Sydow is still alive. How old is this guy?

Nicholas Sparks is the new Michael Crichton or John Grisham -- insofar as he's more famous for the many movies based on his books as for the books themselves. Except where Crichton wrote about science and Grisham wrote about the law, Sparks writes about schmaltz. His latest schmaltz-fest, Dear John, looks to be yet another tale in the "tragic romance" vein, which makes us wonder if there's a formula to Sparks' books, or at least to the movies based on them. We parsed the plots of his five films to date -- and his upcoming movie with Miley Cyrus -- to see what threads they had in common. (Warning: While their books have been out for a while, the write-ups of the last two films on our list contain minor spoilers, although we could figure out their plots without even seeing them.)