Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron E... Review: Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There's something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe. Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension. Huh? Wha? How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essentials of the human condition? Just hang on for a shock to the system. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil — expected to do battle —... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Starring: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Jul... Review: Meryl Streep can do anything: sing, dance, do splits, act her heart out. She (almost) saves this clumsy, overwrought film version of the Abba musical that's been running on stages from Broadway to Barcelona since 1999, grossing over $2 billion and luring more than 30 million ticketbuyers to hear Abba songs by Sweden's Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson shoehorned into a plot where they don't really fit. Who can argue with that kind of "money, money/Always sunny/In a rich man's world success?" I can, at least where the movie is concerned, because the three formidable women responsible for the show — producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson and director Phyllida Lloyd — let the magic slip through their fingers on the treacherous trip from stage to screen. The ... Rating: 2 Stars

Starring: Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Judah Friedlander... Review: Eddie Murphy — was that Oscar nominated performance in Dreamgirls just something I imagined? — continues to trash his very real talent with bottomfeeding material. In Meet Dave, Murphy limits himself to two roles (none human). He plays a pint-sized alien from outer space and the spacecraft he rode in on. If you think I'm going to explain that lame premise, think again. But know this: Murphy, teaming again with his Norbit director Brian Robbins, is assuming we'll all line up for lazyass toilet jokes and pay for the privilege. Prove him wrong, people, please. Rating: 1 Star

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem Review: Remove a star from the rating if you take this Journey without wearing 3-D glasses. That's where the real fun comes in. Otherwise you have a family-friendly retelling of Jules Verne's 1864 novel (best remembered is the 1959 movie with an overqualified James Mason, a shirtless Pat Boone and a gorgeous Arlene Dahl) in a romp that is lazily content to connect the dots instead of breaking new ground. Brendan Fraser is Indiana Jones stalwart and goofily charming as Trevor Anderson, a science prof who retraces the steps of his brother, who died searching for the center of the earth. With his 13-year-old nephew (Josh Hutcherson) in tow, along with a Icelandic babe (Anita Briem) in the role of guide, Trevor finds his way by carrying a copy of the book Verne wrote 144 years ago (score one for... Rating: 2.5 Stars

Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Ladislav Be... Review: Granted, Guillermo del Toro's sequel to his 2004 Hellboy is not a work of art like his Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth. But his latest spin on Mike Mignola's vividly drawn Dark Horse comic series sure is a surprise package of fun, fright and untamed imagination. If you're looking for a creature feature, you've found nirvana. Things that go squish in the night? Del Toro's got a million of them, and I mean that literally. There's a scene at the Troll Market that almost equals the cantina scene in Star Wars, the first one when George Lucas still knew how to do it. "I'm not a baby, I'm a tumor," sasses something being coddled in a mother's arms. Yowsa! Then there's the cigar-chomping, crimefighting superfreak Hellboy himself, played again by Ron Perlman with face red, fist massive and horns that... Rating: 3 Stars

Starring: Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver, John Ratzenberger, K... Review: First image: the Earth as a garbage dump, a future reduced to ruins. For the past 700 years, what's left of humanity has been cruising the skies in a spaceship. Only a tiny robot, WALL-E (for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth class), scoots around on urban terra firma compacting trash into piles that grow into skyscrapers. First sound: a voice lifted in song: "Out there/there's a world outside of Yonkers." The tune is "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," a merry ditty from the forgotten 1969 movie version of Hello, Dolly with Barbra Streisand. WALL-E, his eyes like binoculars (hell, they are binoculars!), watches an old, muddy video tape of Dolly with the same yearning we see in Michael Crawford, who plays a young store clerk at the turn of the 20th-century, warbling about... Rating: 4 Stars