The great Irish director Jim Sheridan makes some of the most emotionally articulate films I've ever seen. I cried my way through most of My Left Foot and In America, and now I've done the same during his latest, Brothers. The film, a faithful remake of Danish director Susanne Bier's  Brodre, tells the story of two brothers, one good and one bad—that is, if you believe family lore.

Sam (Toby Maguire) is a decorated Marine and former high school quarterback married to Grace (Natalie Portman), his childhood sweetheart. They have two young daughters (Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare). Sam is just getting ready for another tour of duty in Afghanistan when his kid brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) gets released from jail. (The crime is never specified, but it appears to have been some sort of burglary.) The boys' alcoholic father Hank (Sam Shepherd), a Vietnam vet, thinks Tommy can do no right and Sam can do no wrong—and he never hesitates to say so. Inevitably, Tommy lives up to his family's low opinion of...

Are you ready to see Robert De Niro in full-on old man sad sack mode, a la Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt? No? Consider yourself warned.

In the overly schematic Everybody's Fine, the Raging Bull himself plays lonely widower Frank Goode, who, after his adult children blow him off for the holidays, decides to bring Mohammed to the mountains. One by one, he makes surprise visits to his kids—inquiring about their happiness, expressing concern for their well-being, but discovering that not all is as it seems.

First, Frank visits his n'er-do-well artist son in New York, but his son never returns home. Then he visits his ad exec daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale) who seems to have the model husband and son, until a dinnertime fight exposes some chinks in their perfect façade. Next, he meets with Robert the symphony conductor (Sam Rockwell), who, as it turns out, is not a conductor at all, but a timpanist. (Frank is disappointed by this turn of events, but he shouldn't be—being a professional timpanist is a sweet gig.) Finally, he visits...

New Moon really is like porn for tweens. It has two dreamy boys—one athletic and smiley; the other brooding and poetic—both deeply, madly, eternally in love with the same girl. It features lots of moony stares and desperate embraces—and the fact that the athletic boy is a werewolf and the brooding guy is a vampire only adds to the total emo-ness of it all.

But I have to give the filmmakers credit. Much like Twilight before it, New Moon is respectfully pandering, if such a thing is possible. It gives the audience, almost all of whom have read (and in some cases memorized) Stephanie Meyer's books, exactly what it wants. So Edward the vampire (Robert Pattinson) lurks in shadows and wears overcoats and perfects his tortured pout. And Jacob the werewolf (newly buff Taylor Lautner) runs through the woods and climbs deftly into bedroom windows—often without his shirt. Meanwhile, Bella (Kristen Stewart) pines beautifully—mostly for Edward but maybe a little bit for young Jacob, too.

In this...

I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance when they showed the real Michael Oher at the end of The Blind Side.

No, not because the young actor Quinton Aaron doesn't look much like the Ravens rookie offensive tackle—although he doesn't. But because the real Michael Oher walked with his head up—he had an athlete's gait, a quiet confidence. He wasn't the halting, shoe-gazing, nearly mute man-child depicted in the film.

No wonder it's rumored that Oher is not a fan of the film. It turned him into Forrest Gump.

And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with the film. There were pretty much two ways to do Oher's fascinating real-life story—as a teen, he was rescued from the streets of Memphis (his real mom was a junkie and his father was out of the picture) and ultimately adopted by a wealthy white family. You can dig deep, show the larger social and personal ramifications of this act of kindness, and the inevitable conflicts that arose. Or you can do a neatly scrubbed, sit-com ready, Disneyfied version of the events.

Guess which one this film...