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"You're good with weird," a character tells Bella mid-way through "The Twilight Saga: New Moon." That's an understatement. In the first Twilight movie, as in the first of the series by Stephanie Meyer, high school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moved to the rainiest town in the US, Forks, Washington and fell deeply in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson), who looked like a teenager but was in fact a vampire who was more than 100 years old. He and his "family," the Cullens, are sort of vampire vegetarians, living on animal blood. But there are other vampires who continue to prey on humans, and they almost killed Bella before Edward rescued her. And then they lived happily ever after until it was time for another book/movie, and that is where we begin.

Edward, convinced that their relationship will always put Bella in danger, leaves, telling her he will never see her again. She is devastated and isolates herself from everyone. She discovers that Edward appears to her when she is in danger, so she takes some foolish risks, just to feel close to him. But then the quiet support and gentle teasing of her friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) begin to make her feel that she is able to be a part of the world again.

Like Edward, Jacob loves Bella and would do anything to protect her. And like Edward, Jacob has a secret. He is part of a tribe of wolf-people. Like "The Hulk," his anger manifests itself in a powerful transformation. And Bella finds herself at the center of a centuries-old war between the vampires and the wolves.

The wildly popular Twilight Saga has the core elements of girl-friendly romances from "Wuthering Heights" to "Titanic:" a boyfriend who is not approved by parents who is utterly undone by the appeal of the female lead, and something to make sure that their relationship is about longing, not satisfaction. Just in case you aren't paying close attention, we see Bella sleeping with a copy of "Romeo and Juliet" on her pillow, and her English class watching a video of the play. The teacher calls on Edward to recite one of Romeo's speeches. And later, Edward, like Romeo, believes that his love is dead and decides he cannot live without her.

The movie has a lot of longing. Characters exchange meaningful looks and take an extra beat before responding to allow for some strategic intakes of breath and swelling of the score. Lautner's excellent abs play such a significant role they should have their own billing. There's a reference to self-referential cleverness that is almost meta. And new director Chris Weitz does not have Catherine Hardwicke's feel for the rhythms of teenage interactions and the intensity of teen romance. And he does not have her ability to tell the story through the settings; we miss the lush natural world of the first chapter. Weitz and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg also have to grapple with a transitional story that translates less well to screen than the first one. But he benefits from more experience with special effects and a bigger budget for them, too. He catches the spirit of the story and allows the natural chemistry between his leads do the rest. And that is enough to make this movie enormously enjoyable and keep us looking forward to the next one.

Paul Rust is 28, and looks it, maybe a little older. But in "I Love You, Beth Cooper" he plays Denis Cooverman, a high school valedictorian. Jack T. Carpenter, last seen playing a college student in "Sydney White" two years ago, is 24, and looks it. But he is also playing a graduating senior, Cooverman's best friend Rich Munsch. As the movie opens, two actors who look like they should be playing guys in lab coats and stethoscopes wearing suits and carrying briefcases are wearing cap and gown and pretending -- badly -- that they are at their high school graduation. They look older than their principal, clue number one that no one is paying much attention to making sure this movie is going to work on any level.

Clues two through twelve that this movie is a mess come very quickly, and that is all that comes quickly in this slow-moving, sour-tasting disaster. It is possible -- unlikely, but possible -- that there is yet some unexplored humor to be made out of difficulty in opening a champagne bottle, but what this movie gives us instead is an excruciatingly drawn-out extended sequence with the most unimaginative of pay-offs. The characters race from one place to another for no purpose -- either in story or in comedy. There are more locations than there are laughs.

Cooverman, the high school valedictorian, gets up to give his graduation speech and instead of the usual, "as we go forth," he decides this would be a good time to tell the school's mean girl that she is an insecure witch, the school bully that he is cruel because he was abused, Munsch that he should come out of the closet, and the school cheerleader, Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere of "Heroes") that even though they have never spoken, he loves her. So the rest of the movie consists of the consequences of these poorly-timed revelations as Cooverman has to run from Cooper's crazed and coked up boyfriend and Munsch keeps telling everyone he's not gay. Oh, and everyone gets to break in on Cooverman's parents having sex in a car. Cooverman's father is played by Alan Ruck, who must have spent every minute on set wondering how he could be in both one of the all-time best teen movies ("Ferris Bueller's Day Off") and one of the worst (this one). Every single character is a dull paper-thin caricature, from Cooper's roid rage boyfriend to Cooverman's despised ex-girlfriend, whose unforgivable failing is that she is not pretty and she likes him.

The wild last night of high school party movie can be done well ("Can't Hardly Wait," "Dazed and Confused," "American Graffiti"). Here, however, director Chris Columbus seems to have taken the tiredest and most predictable elements from each of them, wrung out anything resembling an authentic or appealing detail, and then dragged out every single set-piece to the agonizing breaking point. I can't say I've never seen a clumsy attempt to open a champagne bottle go wrong on screen before, but I can say I have never seen one so poorly staged and lugubriously paced. It look Cooverman less time to get through high school than it felt like I spent watching this film.

Part of the charm of "An Education," a bittersweet coming of age story based on a brief memoir by Lynn Barber, is how much we know what its main character does not. Jenny (an incandescent Carey Mulligan) is a teenager in 1961 London, over-protected by her overly-cautious and conventional parents and eager to be independent and to have adventures. She is used to being the smartest one in the class and so even more than most teenagers, she is convinced that she understands many important things her parents cannot possibly comprehend. She is eager to grow up, to seem sophisticated, to be sophisticated. She is innocent, filled with potential, willing to be taught -- and she has no idea how powerfully attractive those qualities are to a predatory older man.

But we know that, and when David (Peter Sarsgaard) rescues Jenny and her cello from a rainstorm by giving her a ride home, we know she will confuse urbanity with wisdom, that she will think that because he lies on her behalf he will not lie to her. But the most important thing we know is that like Jenny, London is also on the brink of enormous changes. We know that a world of opportunities she could never imagine will open up to her. Unlike Jenny, we know she is going to be fine. After all, we know she went on to tell her story, in itself a triumph over whatever went wrong and whatever she lost.

Danish director Lone Scherfig perfectly captures London just as it is about to move from the drab, stiff-upper-lip, world of post-WWII deprivation to the brash and explosive era of mods and rockers, Carnaby Street and the Beatles, Twiggy, "The Avengers," and Joe Orton. Part of what makes David so exciting is that Jenny believes that the only options available to her are teacher and housewife and the only examples of both she has seen appear dull and unrewarding. David gives her a glimpse of a life that is never dull. It is always shopping and parties and travel, pretty clothes and lovely restaurants. If in order to have all of that she must lie to her parents and defy her teachers, that makes it all the more exciting. It binds her to him even more, creating a set of rules that is just for them.

That is how it seems, anyway. The education referred to in the movie title tells us that she will learn some difficult lessons. But its conclusion reminds Jenny and us that it is only the end of her beginning. She thought meeting David was the beginning of her future; she learns that the real beginning only came afterward.

The screenplay by Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity," "About a Boy") is sympathetic but insightful, skillful in sketching in each of the characters. Sarsgaard also makes David more than a predator. Jenny is not just smarter than he is; she is stronger, too. As Jenny goes from school girl to dressed-up doll to the beginning of adulthood, from the make-it-do, wear-it-out modesty of her home to Paris hot spots, Production designer Andrew McAlpine and costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux show exquisite sensitivity in giving Jenny a look that tells the story. Every performance is a gem: Alfred Molina, proud but fearful as Jenny's father, Emma Thompson, starchy as the headmistress, and Olivia Williams, a teacher who wants more for Jenny than she wants for herself (it must have been quite a challenge for hair and make-up to turn Williams into such a dowdy character). Rosamund Pike is utterly charming as a dim but kind-hearted party girl. And Carey Mulligan, in a star-making turn, makes this into one of the best films of the year.

Think "Taming of the Shrew Wears Prada." Book editor Margaret (Sandra Bullock) is whip-smart and whippet-thin, ferociously competent, ruthlessly demanding, and just plain scary. When she strides into the office in her spike Christian Louboutin heels, IMs radiate through the company: "The witch is on her broom!" And everyone switches into high-productivity mode. She is all-business, ambitious, and ferocious. When we first see her, she is riding her exercise bicycle indoors front of a video of the outdoors but even that does not hold her attention; she is also reading a manuscript.

Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) is her assistant. For three beleaguered years, he has been at her beck and call 24/7, from her morning coffee to midnight runs to giving up his grandmother's 90th birthday party so he can work all weekend. She treats him like something between a prop and a galley slave. In other words, they're made for each other and we will have the pleasure of seeing them figure that out.

The structure is familiar -- and overly revealed in the trailer -- but the comic timing is impeccable, with Betty White adding sparkle as Andrew's 90-year-old "Gammy." Bullock is just the actress to show us the vulnerability that makes Margaret hold on so tightly and Reynolds is strong enough (he was the bad guy in "Wolverine" after all) to keep Andrew from seeming henpecked and deft enough to make us see why he is up to Margaret's level. The Alaskan scenery is like a commercial for Sarah Palin's travel bureau and it is spicy without being smarmy, an increasingly rare achievement for date movies these days.

Everything that made the adorable "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" so winning is missing from this tired and formulaic sitcom of a movie about an American tour guide in Greece. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," with writer/star Nia Vardalos, was filled with charm, heart, originality, and vivid detail. Now Vardalos stars -- but did not write -- "My Life in Ruins." It is as tired as its title, a drawn-out sitcom of a movie that tries to charm us with thin jokes about ignorant tourists who travel around the world but don't want to see anything.

Vardalos plays Georgia, an American of Greek heritage who went to Greece to teach but lost her job and is now stuck working for a small company with two tour buses. The other guide gets the one with the good air conditioning and the happy, easy-going customers. Georgia gets the bad bus, the bad hotels, and the cranky tourists. Plus the guy who is always making corny jokes (Richard Dreyfuss) -- not that they are any better than the rest of the jokes in the movie -- and some Australians who appear to be cheerful but whom no one can understand. Georgia sees this as a way to teach the visitors about the glory and history of Greece, to have them "bask in history" and "to be a part of the birth of civilization." But they think they are on vacation and what she has in mind feels too much like work. All they want to do is eat ice cream and buy souvenirs.

And the new tour bus driver has a name that sounds like a bad word and a huge fuzzy beard. You think she'll be surprised when she finds out that he speaks English and understands what she's been saying? You're right! You think it will be funny when it happens? You're wrong. You think the tour bus driver will shave and turn out to be handsome so that Georgia can recover her "kefi" (Greek for mojo)? You're right! You think it will make the movie entertaining? You're wrong!

Vardalos looks uncomfortably skinny and as though she knows she could have written a better script. "Saturday Night Live's" Rachel Dratch is wasted as the kind of tourist who is always looking for the Hard Rock Cafe or an international branch of Curves. And then there is the warring couple with the mopey teenage daughter who -- here's a surprise -- won't take the earbuds out of her ears. The stereotypes are not awful because they are predictable. After all, they become stereotypes because they happen so often. They are awful because they are so thin and superficial and phony. It is ironic that while Georgia is whining about how tourists do not appreciate the grandeur and history of the ancient ruins, the movie itself feels as though it is the cinematic equivalent of a chintzy souvenir. It is a shame to spoil the beautiful scenery with these vaudeville-era jokes. Georgia may find her kefi in this film, but the script never does.