"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" *** (out of four): Delightfully witty, feature-length adaptation of the popular children's book doesn't have the emotional heft to take its place among the great animated classics, but when it rains it soars.

Watching a movie in 3D requires a certain fondness for wearing an ill-fitting pair of your grandfather's smudged sunglasses for 90 minutes. It's a commitment; if you're going to do it, the movie better at least be worth it. While much of the recent 2D animated fare in theaters has been some of the best stuff out there (particularly if it bears the name Pixar), cinematic forays into the third-dimension tend to be gimmicky ("Beowulf", "Journey to the Center of the Earth"). Of course, this has been the case since the dawn of those cardboard red and blue glasses half a century ago. And though the glasses are still required, the technology has vastly improved in recent years. The latest entry is "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", a delightfully witty, feature-length adaptation of the children's book by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett.

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"Whiteout" ** (out of four): An adequate thriller - complete with scares, red herrings and a nonsensical twist-ending - which exploits its Antarctic surroundings for all their worth.

"Whiteout", perhaps sadly, is not an accounting of the origins of the popular correctional fluid. Instead, the title refers to what the script calls an "unholy combination of climatic events" that results in a person not being able to see more than six inches in the distance. Something like this doesn't tend to happen in your average city. It takes a certain locale. One such location is Antarctica which, as a title card helpfully reminds us, is "the coldest, most isolated land mass on Earth". Brrr.

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"9" *** (out of four): Wondrously-imaginative, lightly-plotted fable about the stitch-work creations who outlive humanity in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Well, we did it again. We humans created machines that proved to be the death of us. And, again ignoring Charlton Heston's oft-imitated cries, we maniacs...we blew it up. This time, however, humanity is not succeeded by a race of snarky chimps. This time, in Shane Acker's wondrously-imaginative "9", the few remaining lifeforms in the post-apocalyptic wasteland we've left behind are stitched together creations with big, binocular eyes and naivete to spare. They're named for the numerals that are handwritten on their backs. Each, to the film's credit, appears to have been created with a different personality (leader, bruiser, caretaker, etc) and each serves a very specific purpose to the story.

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"Fifty Dead Men Walking" **** (out of four): Kari Skogland's honest look at the Northern Ireland "Troubles" from both sides, where no one is entirely right or wrong and loyalties lie somewhere between a community and a cause.

Set in 1980s Belfast, "Fifty Dead Men Walking" is inspired by the true story of Martin McGartland, who spied for the British government while rising within the ranks of the IRA (a discovered IRA informer was considered a "dead man walking.") The film takes an honest look at the conflict from both sides, where no one is entirely right or wrong. Strictly speaking, there are no heroes or villains, only human beings whose loyalties lie somewhere between a community and a cause. And, not surprisingly, some get caught in the middle. Though "caught in the middle" is a misleading expression here, since that is precisely how and where one escapes divisiveness - or tries to.

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"Extract" *** (out of four): Mike Judge returns to form with this amusing, if oddly misogynistic, workplace comedy set in a flavor extract factory.

Ten years after "Office Space" became a cultural touchstone for cubicle warriors the world over, and after a brief detour into absurdity with 2006's unwatchable "Idiocracy" (the film's wit ended with its title), Mike Judge returns to form with the workplace comedy "Extract". In the film, Jason Bateman plays Joel, the owner and operator of a flavor extract factory. Joel is a working stiff with a typical Mike Judge problem: he's not gettin' any at home. If Joel doesn't make it home from work by 8pm, his wife (SNL's Kristin Wiig, successfully playing it straight) cinches the waist on her sweatpants into an impenetrable bow, making the prospect of hanky-panky a nonstarter. Joel spends most nights at a local watering hole, where long-haired bartender Dean (Ben Affleck, relaxing behind a shaggy wig) dispenses drinks with a side of bad advice and, occasionally, drugs.

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"Inglourious Basterds" ***1/2 (out of four): "Inglourious Basterds," with its outrageous Jews-Gone-Wild spin, just may be Quentin Tarantino's most badass movie yet.

"Holocaust movies always have Jews as victims," Quentin Tarantino huffed to The Atlantic in a recent interview. That explains why the daring writer/director decided to take that very concept and blow it to pieces in "Inglourious Basterds," a fantasy retelling of World War II. It's an outrageous, wild ride of a film that calls for a case of Red Bull more than a box of Kleenex.

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"Shorts" **1/2 (out of four): Director Robert Rodriguez returns to family-friendly fare with a film that's sure to entertain the youngsters but offers little to the 14-and-over crowd.

Although director Robert Rodriguez may have gotten his start with an ultra low-budget action flick ("El Mariachi"), he's no stranger to family-friendly fare ("Spy Kids", "The Adventures of Shark Girl and Lava Boy"). "Shorts" brings Rodriguez back to the kid flick genre, where adult characters are really just caricatures fleshed out enough to provide plot fodder, while the story revolves primarily around the kids.

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"The Time Traveler's Wife" *1/2 (out of four): There's enough manipulative pap in "The Time Traveler's Wife" to make even Nicholas Sparks roll his eyes.

There's enough manipulative pap in "The Time Traveler's Wife," based on the popular tear-jerking novel by Audrey Niffenegger, to make even Nicholas Sparks roll his eyes. Before the book was released to the public in 2003, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (in the pre-Brangelina days) saw its big-screen potential and scooped up the film rights. But somewhere from page to projector, something went horribly amiss.

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"District 9" ***1/2 (out of four): Inventive, intriguing sci-fi indie with mainstream polish is pure allegory - and isn't afraid of the questions it raises or the objections it may incur.

"District 9", a sci-fi indie with mainstream polish, opens with an intriguing premise. An alien ship (big, round, imposing) hovers lifelessly over Johannesburg, South Africa. The newscaster in the film is winkingly incredulous, "not over New York, not over Los Angeles, but here in Johannesburg". The inventive, largely improvised, script continues by having the alien ship just sit there. No hostile advances, no ultimatum, no giant displays of pyrotechnics. Finally, after several months of stalemate, the military intervenes, sending helicopters up to the alien ship to cut open a doorway. What they find is also unexpected.

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"Cold Souls" **1/2 (out of four): This is a film about legume-resembling souls and transcendental storage, so it should be a laugh riot from start to finish. It's not.

In "Cold Souls," the metaphysically bizarre dark comedy by Sophie Barthes, Paul Giamatti is horrified to discover that his soul resembles a chickpea. Perhaps he was hoping it would look more macho, like a Porsche or a barbell. It's an amusing idea for a film -- removing one's soul to lessen the load -- but it's a far sharper concept than a well-rounded story.

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"A Perfect Getaway" **1/2 (out of four): A Hawaiian honeymoon turns sinister in this effective but absurd thriller from writer-director David Twohy.

"A Perfect Getaway" is another entry in the long line of arrogant-tourists-get-taught-a-lesson subgenre of thrillers. Recently, we've seen torture-porn renditions such as "Turistas" and "Hostel", but the granddaddy of them all may be "Deliverance". When done well, and that 1972 Burt Reynolds squeal-like-a-pig gem certainly was, these films can be amusing and escapist in a we-would-never-make-THAT-mistake kind of way. When they're not so good, they typically devolve into a lot of running and screaming. "Getaway" falls (or maybe it's chased) into the second category. But before it does, it offers some effective paranoid thrills thanks to a game cast and writer-director David Twohy ("Pitch Black").

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"Julie & Julia" **1/2 (out of four): Meryl Streep turns in a brilliant performance as the late Julia Child. Too bad she couldn't have the whole movie to herself.

Julia Child was, in every sense, a towering figure in the culinary world. Big of body and of personality, she made French cuisine accessible and appealing to American home cooks. Both canonized and lampooned, her show "The French Chef" was groundbreaking ― spawning generations of celebrity chefs, foodies and devoted fans. One of those fans, Julie Powell, was so enamored of Child and her recipes that she wrote a blog about it. That blog eventually became a book, which has now become a movie, written and directed by Nora Ephron.

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"Paper Heart" *** (out of four): Charlyne Yi's charming pseudo-documentary about the nature of love is a surprising breath of fresh air.

So what is love, anyway? It's a subject that pervades every corner of our culture, from high-brow literature to pop songs and syrupy romantic comedies, but are we any closer to understanding what love is? Part documentary, part fiction, "Paper Heart" is the story of comedian Charlyne Yi's quest to get a handle on love, both from her interview subjects and her own brush with romance with (real-life boyfriend) Michael Cera ("Superbad").

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"Funny People" **1/2 (out of four): This isn't the type of comedy we've come to expect from Judd Apatow. And that's fine. But while this labor-of-love is at times bittersweet and raucously funny, it's also an over-long, meandering mess.

Early in "Funny People" - the latest from comedy wunderkind Judd Apatow - comedian George Simmons (Adam Sandler) is diagnosed with a terminal illness. After receiving the news, George's subsequent stand-up act takes a turn for the maudlin, causing an audience member to remark, "Wow, George Simmons is getting dark." The same might be said of Mr. Apatow. The writer-director of "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" has been heralded as ushering in a new generation of feeling-man's comedy. One that has spawned such bro-friendly fare as "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "I Love You, Man". So audiences can be forgiven for feeling confused during "Funny People". This isn't the Judd Apatow we've come to know and love. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, "Funny People" isn't enough of a step in a new direction. If anything, it wanders around for a while flirting with deeper themes, occasionally dipping back into the familiar comedy trough (when in doubt, say "balls").

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"Adam" *** (out of four): Autism speaks and has plenty to say in "Adam," the sweet-natured, atypical romance from writer/director Max Mayer.

Adam is not like other guys. He's the smartest person in any room he enters, handsome without a trace of ego, sweet almost to a fault. But there's something else that sets him apart: He has Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning type of autism.

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