Take away the (frankly lame) 3-D and a few CGI bells and whistles, and Captain America: The First Avenger feels like the  kind of movie a little tyke might’ve sprung 10 cents for in 1945 and caught as part of a double-feature matinee.

And that’s exactly what director Joe Johnston is going for.

This is an old-fashioned movie, set during WWII and based on the popular Marvel comic book, with a 98 pound weakling named Steve (even the name Steve feels so charmingly square, doesn’t it?) who just wants to fight bullies (read: Nazis) overseas. He keeps trying to enlist, but gets rejected because he’s too frail.

But a German scientist (Stanley Tucci), with loyalties to the Allies, recognizes Steve’s true strength (of character, that is) and recruits him for a secret project: He’s going to turn into a Steve a super soldier.

So Steve goes into this sci-fi-ish looking metal chamber, surrounded by men in white lab coats, and emerges looking like, well, Chris Evans. The CGI here is great—for the film’s first half hour, they managed to plausibly shrink the buff Evans into a cute wimp (using a body double whose face is replaced by Evans’—Winklevoss-twin-style). Steve’s newly rippled...

As I watched the juicy and satisfying Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, it occurred to me how patient the series has been.

Here we were at the eighth and final film of the series (based on seven books) and we still didn’t know Harry’s exact link to the evil Lord Voldemort, still didn’t know if the brooding Severus Snape (the indispensable Alan Rickman) was good or bad (or both), still hadn’t seen Harry’s loyal sidekicks Hermione and Ron consummate their unspoken love with a kiss, and, most stunningly, still hadn’t witnessed Harry and Voldemort in any kind of epic showdown.

And yet, none of the previous films seemed like filler—each had its own internal rhythm and narrative, its own demons to slay (real and metaphorical), its own talismans to collect, its own pieces of the Harry Potter/Voldemort puzzle to be revealed. We’ve grown to love and care about these characters and we’ve been too happily ensconced in JK Rowling’s lavishly orchestrated world of muggles and wizards and enchantments to be restless.

Our patience has been rewarded: Unlike some finales that don’t quite satisfy (*cough* Lost), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 gives us...

Bad Teacher, not to be confused with Horrible Bosses, which opens in two weeks (is this the Snakes on a Plane effect at work?), is a one-joke film that inevitably wears out its welcome. But hey, at least the joke is pretty good.

The extremely game Cameron Diaz is Elizabeth Halsey, who teaches middle school to pay for a boob job (all the better to land a rich husband). She has nothing but contempt for her students—indeed, she’s usually too bored, hungover, or high to even notice them.

There’s one great sequence where Diaz—who performs the whole film wearing high heels, tight skirts, and a “screw you” snarl—marks up papers with comments like: “Could you BE any more stupid?” She also shows her kids inspirational teacher movies—Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Dangerous Minds— in lieu of doing any actual teaching. This is funny, liberating even, in our PC world, where every child is a precious snowflake and every movie teacher just cares so darn much!

But Bad Teacher has no place to go. There’s Justin Timberlake—cute, but still not making a case for abandoning music— as a dorky and rich substitute teacher who Elizabeth pursues. He, however, only has eyes for...

After a lifetime of making films that were explicit homages to his beloved Manhattan, Woody Allen seems to have reached the “European vacation” phase of his career. He obviously doesn’t know England (Match Point) or Spain (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) as well as he knows the Upper West Side, but these new locales have inspired him and even loosened him up. When describing his latest, Midnight in Paris, one feels compelled to use French pastry analogies: It’s a bonbon, a macaroon, a petit four.

The role of Woody Allen will this time be played by the droll Owen Wilson—who, with his WASPy looks marred by that fabulously crooked nose, has always struck me as Robert Redford’s comedy doppelganger. Turns out, he’s an excellent, if unlikely, stand-in. Wilson has a child-like sense of awe about him, so he represents the romantic side of Woody’s nature well.

Here, he plays Gil, a Hollywood screenwriter vacationing in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). Gil is disenchanted with life in L.A.—he’s working on a novel and fantasizes about living the bohemian life in...