There’s a really cool idea afoot in “Rise of the Guardians,” namely that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman aren’t merely responsible for their little corner of children’s lives but are actually a super-team of “Avengers” proportions. Taking their cues from the unseen Man in the Moon, they protect children everywhere from evildoers.

There’s also a really tired concept dragging down the film, namely that new Guardians recruit Jack Frost isn’t sure that he wants to join up, and he doesn’t know who he really is -- and he’s, basically, the umpteenth Joseph-Campbell-reluctant-hero who pops up in seemingly every kids...

If your local supermarket makes really great donuts, it’s quite possible that you’ll continue to shop there even if the prices are excessive, the selection spotty and the muzak unbearable.

In the grocery store that is “Price Check,” Parker Posey is the awesome donut.

Posey plays Susan, a West Coast firebrand who takes over the pricing and marketing office of a Long Island chain of groceries owned by a huge corporation.

She’s passionate, mouthy, doesn’t suffer fools and is determined to turn this sleepy office into a hard-working team that’s going to lift the company out of the doldrums. The movie, unfortunately, isn...

Now that this latest “Twilight” sequel caps off the series, and with it the pronouncements from teen girls of all ages and genders of whether they are “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob,” let me make my affiliation clear.

I’m Team Bill Condon.

The gifted director behind “Dreamgirls” and “Kinsey” and “Gods and Monsters” is too talented by leagues for this material, yet he’s never suffused either of the “Breaking Dawn” movies with even a drop of condescension.

Also read: ...

There are few dramaturgical tasks as difficult or as thankless as telling the life story of a Great Man (or Woman), particularly when that historical figure has become the sort of legendary icon featured in national monuments and on currency.

Wisely, director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (“Munich,” “Angels in America”) have avoided making “Lincoln” into a traditional biography — there’s no homework on the back of a shovel in coal, no rail-splitting, no debating Stephen A. Douglas. Instead, working from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” the film abandons a macro approach, focusing instead on the events of January 1865 and allowing Lincoln’s actions during that period to spell out everything that made him such a legend.

...