106 minutes

In theaters December 5, 2008

Rating: R, Musical drama

As the song says: they nursed it, rehearsed it, and gave out the news. But the birth of these blues took place in a small bar on the south side of Chicago in 1947.

Thus begins the musical drama, Cadillac Records, a piece of popcult history that chronicles the turbulent development of Chicago-based Chess Records and its legendary recording artists through the 1950s and 1960s.

165 minutes

In theaters November 26

Rating: PG-13, Drama

Wizard of Oz that he is, director Baz Luhrmann uses the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" throughout Australia as part of a Wizard of Oz motif, but offers the film as his homeland's answer to Gone with the Wind.

Delusion of grandeur on both counts, it turns out.

90 minutes

In theaters November 26, 2008

Rating: PG-13, Comedy

'Tis the season to be jolly.

Unless, that is, your parents are divorced and your soulmate's parents are also divorced and the two of you therefore have to load up the car and drive to not one and not two and not three but four different households on Christmas day to spread around some of that -- what's it called again? -- oh, that's right:

128 minutes

In theaters November 26, 2008

Rating: R, Drama

On a 1978 morning, disgruntled politician Dan White climbed through a City Hall window and assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, then shot and killed City Supervisor Harvey Milk.

That's the climax of Milk -- the first mainstream gay-themed film since 2005's Brokeback Mountain -- a terrific bio-drama and real-life period piece that's nonetheless timely (Proposition 8) as it examines the civil rights movement from the perspective of the gay rights movement, focusing on the first openly gay man to be voted into public office in America.

95 minutes

In theaters November 21, 2008

Rating: PG, Animated comedy

Bolt's no dolt. And he's no mutt either.

He's the canine protagonist of Bolt, a smart, funny, edgy, and heartwarming CG-animated comedic adventure with lots of loopy laughs aimed both at kids and ex-kids, I kid you not.

120 minutes

In theaters November 21, 2008

Rating: R, Comedy-drama

Slumdog Millionaire is a sweet-and-sour comedy-drama about a poor kid who wants to be a millionaire who goes on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? But in India.

Adapted for the screen by Simon Beaufoy from the Vikas Swarup novel, Q & A, it chronicles the life of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an impoverished Indian teenage orphan currently working as a tea server for a telephone marketing company who, as the film begins is -- in the film's framing device -- a contestant trying to win a fortune on India's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, the country's most popular quiz show.

120 minutes

In theaters November 21, 2008

Rating: PG-13, Drama

As this romantic vampire drama fades into memory, it's easy to see why the essential target audience -- young women and girls -- is expected to respond to it.

Twilight casts quite a spell.

90 minutes

In theaters November 7, 2008

Rating: PG, Animated comedy

This sequel is a bit more than an equal.

Not only is Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa outperforming 2005's Madagascar at the box office. It literally outperforms it.

106 minutes

In theaters November 14, 2008

Rating: PG-13, Thriller

A lapel-grabbing action sequence is obligatory at the opening of any James Bond thriller.

But the joylessly frenetic one that opens the awkwardly titled Quantum of Solace should be a tipoff that something is very much amiss in this 22nd adventure in the longest-running franchise in movie history.

114 minutes

In theaters November 14, 2008

Rating: R, Thriller

With all due respect to Nosferatu, Dracula, and the other members of their specialty genre, Let the Right One In just might be the best vampire movie I've ever seen.

Part of the uniqueness of this gothic thriller from Sweden comes from the fact that it revolves around a preteen vampire: now there's something you don't see every day, er, night.

120 minutes

In theaters November 7, 2008

Rating: PG-13, Drama

It's horrific and disturbing, yet it's for children too. Which is why it's sensitively oblique and matter-of-fact and not at all graphic.

The movie version of John Boyne's best-seller for "young adults," The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, is a miraculously powerful, haunting, indelible film, a story for everybody about the twentieth century's defining atrocity told -- uniquely -- from the uncomprehending point of view of an eight-year-old.

99 minutes

In theaters November 7, 2008

Rating: R, Comedy

You respond to this buddy comedy the way you do to charming youngsters you feel great affection for but have to discipline anyway: you disapprove and chide, then smile, maybe even giggle, when they're out of sight.

Role Models mixes raunch and charm in much the same way that many recent projects (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad) emanating from the Judd Apatow flick factory do. What's odd about this one, though, is that, in outline, it seems very much a children's or family film.