WSJ.com: Film Review

Teen girls should run to see "Twilight," the screen version of a best-selling potboiler about a vampire and the girl who loves him. Others needn't run. Or walk.

In these worsening times for feature films, timidity and mediocrity often vie for bottom honors at the multiplex. "Slumdog Millionaire" breaks through to the top.

"Role Models" is a prototypical summer release dropped into early November -- furiously raunchy, occasionally bright and eventually benumbing.

"Splinter" is short, taut, nicely shot, well-acted, astutely directed, original enough to be engrossing and derivative enough to be amusing.

In "Changeling," connections are scrambled between the filmmaking and the period, between Jolie and Malkovich, and the characters they play.

In spite of Josh Brolin's heroic efforts, "W." is a skin-deep biopic that revels in its antic shallowness.

The action thriller "Body of Lies" strives to paint a genuine portrait of two CIA operatives in conflict, but it remains abstract and unaffecting.

"Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" is an imperfect, sometimes familiar but always exuberant comedy with romantic resonance.

The real mystery of Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna" is why it's so dispirited, emotionally distanced and dramatically inert.

"Ghost Town" is enlivened by the performance of Ricky Gervais as a latter-day Scrooge for whom the living are no less annoying than the dead.