This weekend will see one of the biggest box office face-offs of the summer as two big-budget franchises aiming to attract male moviegoers go head-to-head at the multiplex.

Ladies? Don't make him laugh.

Ladies? Don't make him laugh.

ADMISSION 2 1/2 stars. Tina Fey stars as a Princeton admissions officer, Paul Rudd is a hippie-dippie progressive school head lobbying for one of his students, in this odd mix of romantic comedy, improbable soap and Ivy League satire. 1 hr. 57 PG-13 (sex, profanity, adult themes) - Steven Rea

Shooting the Midwest in monochrome came naturally for Alexander Payne in his father-son road trip "Nebraska."

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, whose movies are banned in his country and who has been sentenced to jail by the Islamic regime there, is coming to Cannes for a screening of his latest film, publicists for the movie said Thursday.

(EDITORS: Monday is Memorial Day, when we honor the dead from America's wars. To mark the anniversary, Orange County Register Travel Editor Gary A. Warner, the newspaper's one-time military reporter, offers his updated list of the best World War II movies.)

Thieves outsmarted 80 security guards in an exclusive French Riviera hotel and made off with a necklace that creators say is worth a staggering 2 million euros ($2.6 million) - in the second such jewelry heist during this year's Cannes Film Festival.

The Hollywood Reporter's list of its 10 best stories of the week:

The summer movie season has already brought moviegoers "Iron Man 3" and "Star Trek Into Darkness," the 12th film in that series. Still to come are second installments of "Grown Ups," "Despicable Me," "The Smurfs," "RED," "Kick-Ass," "300" and "Percy Jackson." There's also "Wolverine," a continuation of the Hugh Jackman "X-Men" / "Wolverine" movies; the animated prequel "Monsters University" and the art-film threepeat "After Midnight." Then there are the reconsiderations of pop-culture icons in the latest "Great Gatsby," "Lone Ranger" and Superman film "Man of Steel,"

Paolo Sorrentino has a thing about food - appropriately enough, for the director of a sumptuous feast of a film, "The Great Beauty."

Noah Baumbach's playful, effervescent comedy "Frances Ha" is the story of a young woman's quest to find an apartment in New York. That's an arduous task for most ordinary, gainfully employed people. But Frances (Greta Gerwig) is neither ordinary nor employed. She's a relentless optimist who always believes success is just around the corner, even though she's an apprentice for a dance company that refuses to hire her full time and her longtime roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner, daughter of musician Sting) announces she's moving out of their Brooklyn apartment to live with her boyfriend.

Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin), the blank-faced protagonist of "Pieta," is a collector for a loan shark who charges outrageous interest: Borrow $3,000, say, and you'll have to pay back $30,000 in three months. Since most of the clients, who live in an industrial slum in Cheonggyecheon, South Korea, can rarely afford to settle their debts, Kang-do uses heavy machinery to cripple them in some way - taking a foot or a hand or an arm, just enough for their work insurance policies to cover the injury, so they can pay what they owe.

One of the more buzzed-about films at the Cannes Film Festival, "Omar," is set in the West Bank, and the Palestinian conflict is a key part of the plot.

Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

There is a certain amount of raunchiness, absurdity and juvenile humor expected from the "Hangover" films. The title itself makes it clear this isn't a Mensa tea party.

Bad movies are rarely as much fun as these "Fast and the Furious" pictures. And make no mistake about it - they're bad.

Guys get blotto ... wake up and can't remember what happened the night before ... madness ensues.

Derivative as all get out and plainly concocted by a committee, "Epic" is a children's animated film that is more entertaining and emotional than it has any right to be.

Slow, sentimental and somewhat sedated, the third "Hangover" movie isn't so much exhausted of outrageous "Oh no, they DIDN'T!" ideas as it is spent of energy. And they knew it, too. The only raunchy moment is stuffed into the closing credits, a "we forgot to do that" afterthought.

In the new film "Behind the Candelabra," veteran entertainer Debbie Reynolds has just three major scenes to flesh out one of the most complicated figures in piano-playing showman Liberace's life: his loving but sometimes manipulative mother Frances.

"Before Midnight" - The final scene of 2004's "Before Sunset" was so romantic it drove moviegoers crazy - happily crazy - especially because it was so tantalizingly ambiguous. Jesse and Celine, that appealing (and extremely talkative) couple played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who had fallen in love in the 1995 "Before Sunrise," had reunited at last. In the gorgeous afternoon light of Paris, no less. But we didn't know what would happen next. Nine years later, we have our answer, and it was sure worth the wait. "Before Midnight," the third movie in the Richard Linklater series, is not only as good as the first two, it's arguably better, tackling weightier, trickier issues with wit, humor and breathtaking directness. The setting is still gorgeous - it's a summer vacation in Greece. (Will these two ever venture to an ugly locale?) But the rest is different. Delpy gives Celine a new hardness here, an edge that we saw only a bit in the previous film. And Hawke is extremely effective as a man who adores his partner but is increasingly frustrated with her. It all comes to a head in a humdinger of a fight - just Jesse and Celine in a hotel room, plus a bottle of wine that doesn't get drunk. It gets poured, though, and you'll be so frazzled, you'll want to reach through the screen and chug it down yourself. Rated R for sexual content/nudity and language. 109 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

To convince Kristin Scott Thomas to play the bloodthirsty matriarch of "Only God Forgives," director Nicolas Winding Refn appealed to Scott Thomas - how else? - with the flattery of his own mother.

There's a school of writing that holds that even the most ordinary lives, deeply and thoughtfully observed, can be rendered into art. Another theory suggests that some movies so defy convention as to be graded on the curve as far as things like dialogue and incident and actual drama are concerned.

ORLANDO, Fla. - All those years since "Ice Age" and "Robots," you'd figure Chris Wedge had retired on the "Scrat" bucks he and Blue Sky Animation pulled in from that saber-toothed squirrel.

EPIC

LOS ANGELES - It didn't have to be like this. In the age of green screens and VFX houses, filmmakers responsible for the sixth installment of the "Fast & Furious" franchise didn't have to actually destroy hundreds of cars.

American movies are faring well this year in Cannes, with the Coen Brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis" holding on to the No. 1 spot in the competition for the Palme d'Or, according to a poll of critics compiled by Screen International. Set in 1960s Greenwich Village, "Davis" focuses on a struggling folk singer who's a predecessor of Bob Dylan.

James Franco's filmography is starting to look like a book shelf - and a very respectable one, at that.

A New York City woman has been sentenced to probation for stalking actress Marion Cotillard (koh-tee-YAR') on the Internet.

The lawyer for an 87-year-old woman who accuses Donald Trump of cheating her in a skyscraper condo deal told jurors in Chicago on Wednesday that he was personally repulsed because he felt the "Apprentice" star conned his client and lied about it on the witness stand.

Robert Redford makes actions speak louder than words in shipwreck drama "All Is Lost."

Ratings by the Motion Picture Association of America are: (G) for general audiences; (PG) parental guidance urged because of material possibly unsuitable for children; (PG-13) parents are strongly cautioned to give guidance for attendance of children younger than 13; (R) restricted, younger than 17 admitted only with parent or adult guardian; (NC-17) no one younger than 17 admitted.

Ratings by the Motion Picture Association of America are: (G) for general audiences; (PG) parental guidance urged because of material possibly unsuitable for children; (PG-13) parents are strongly cautioned to give guidance for attendance of children younger than 13; (R) restricted, younger than 17 admitted only with parent or adult guardian; (NC-17) no one younger than 17 admitted.