John Travolta and his family have helped raise money for charities in their home state of Florida with a screening of his new comedy

"Anything's possible in this storm!" says the man with the badge in Werner Herzog's delirious "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," a true feat of daring and one of the craziest films of the year.

The jury in the trial of an Ohio police chief accused of breaking into the home of a woman who carried twins for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick ended five hours of deliberations Friday without a verdict.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" has set a box-office record for midnight screenings.

A prominent mainland Chinese director banned by Beijing from making movies brought his new gay romance film to Hong Kong on Friday for what is likely the last of a handful of screenings on his home soil.

In Japan, where the blades are shiny and sharp and if the fake blood isn't staining the lens, you're not trying hard enough, there' s a rich tradition of sword-and-splatter pictures. That's the tradition Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" leaned on, and it's the foundation of "Ninja Assassin," a more run-of-the-mill Hollywood ninja movie with "Matrix" ties.

Opening Wednesday:

Wesley Snipes' attorneys asked a federal appeals court Friday to review an "unreasonable" three-year prison sentence for the film star, who was convicted a year ago on federal tax charges.

"Quirky." "Eccentric." "Whimsical." Critics trot out the synonyms for "playful" and "odd" when talking about Wes Anderson. A 40-year-old director of wistful character comedies peopled with lovable screwballs - "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" - he brings it all on himself, inviting the label "patron saint of moody hipster comedies" that Newsweek hangs on him.

He swaggered, an outsize personality who filled a room figuratively decades before he did it literally.

When the apocalypse comes, China will save the world.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon," also known as "Twilight: The Squeakquel," is actually pretty good - a tick better than the first "Twilight," which wasn't bad either. These are hardly superlatives on the order of "shattering" and "beautiful," but compared to the film versions of "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons," the only two movies ever made with less sex than the first two "Twilights," they're matchless.

Uplifting. Heartwarming. Schmaltzy but effective. Watching "The Blind Side," I felt my emotions being stage-managed, but once or twice I got something in my eye. It's inspired by a feel-good true story of interracial adoption and gridiron glory. The project could have been designed by scientists synthesizing the crowd-pleasing-movie genome. Bullock + football + Kumbaya = Ka-ching!

In a sense, the soldiers at the center of "The Messenger" are engaged in house-to-house combat. Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) and Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) are unwelcome visitors, wary of what might detonate behind the next door.

Even by the sadistic standards of Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville"), "Antichrist" is a unique form of cruel and unusual punishment: an unrelenting orgy of graphic sex, violence and cynicism that also manages to be wildly pretentious.

James Caan is seeking a divorce from his wife of 14 years.

The wife and two children of Roman Polanski are bearing the brunt of the director's imprisonment in Switzerland as he awaits a decision on his extradition, his lawyer said in an interview to be published Friday.

The end, when it comes, may look a lot like this - grey skies shrouding the ash-covered ruins of civilization.

Sex. Drugs. Prostitution. Pedophilia. Rape. Pedro Almodovar has been able to translate some of the most delicate subjects to the big screen with grace and humor.

As moviegoers across the nation watched the end of the world with the opening of "2012" last week, news of Earth's demise spread quickly across the Web. Scientists, fed up with the misleading prophecies, quickly set the record straight with their own series of articles and a YouTube video.

Wearing a floor-length pastel striped evening gown, Sandra Bullock walked the red carpet in New Orleans Thursday for a special premiere of her latest film, "The Blind Side."

There are loads of references to other sci-fi movies in "Planet 51": "E.T.," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Star Wars," even to a cute little mutt with a head shaped like the monster from "Alien" that squirts acid urine. The movie, about a far-flung planet of green aliens whose civilization resembles 1950s malt-shop and doo-wop America, is also crammed with subtexts about the era's paranoias, from UFO invaders to McCarthyism.

Apparently few things are as entertaining as watching the Earth shake itself to pieces.

"(Untitled)" is a funny movie set in New York City's fashionable art galleries and experimental music scene. Its characters are erudite and foolish, not always likable, but fun to observe.