The Movie Blog

LOS ANGELES (AP) Batman’s rich alter-ego Bruce Wayne has added half a billion dollars to his riches. “The Dark Knight” on Sunday became the second movie in Hollywood history to top $500 million at the domestic box office, raising its total to $502.4 million, according to estimates from distributor Warner Bros.

Revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki has no intention of swapping his pencil for computer graphics and will keep hand drawing his films for as long as he can, he said on Sunday.

French actress Emmanuelle Beart and the Belgian director of her latest movie have defended "Vinyan," amid concerns that the film which opens with the 2004 tsunami may be insensitive to people affected by the tragedy.

Directors Danny Jacobs and Darren Grodsky assemble an enviable cast–including Fairuza Balk, Peter Bogdanovich, Frances Conroy, Brad Dourif, and Chris Messina–for their first film. Newcomer Jeremy Strong holds his own with the veteran actors, playing Peter Hadley, a man whose one-night stand with Bogart (Balk) ends with him at her family home in the California region of the title. Though Peter is an uptight med student, he soon finds understanding with the laid-back, pot-loving residents.

From MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE to THE NOTEBOOK, cinematic adaptations of Nicholas Sparks’s novels are sure to inspire tears, and this drama should be no exception. Diane Lane and Richard Gere, who previously played a couple in UNFAITHFUL, star here as an unhappily married woman and a conflicted man drawn together by a storm in the town of Rodanthe, North Carolina.

Though FIGHT CLUB has reached cult status, CHOKE is surprisingly only the second of writer Chuck Palahniuk’s novels to make it to the screen. This adaptation from actor-writer-director Clark Gregg stars Sam Rockwell as a man with a sex addiction. Anjelica Huston, Brad William Henke, and Kelly Macdonald costar in this darkly comic film that charmed Sundance audiences.

After the success of the period film THE ILLUSIONIST, director Neil Burger turns to more contemporary fare with the drama THE LUCKY ONES. Rachel McAdams, Tim Robbins, and Michael Pena star as a trio of soldiers who are home in America on leave. A blackout causes massive flight cancellations, and the three people decide to drive to Pittsburgh for what turns out to be a very revealing road trip.

Fernando Meirelles (THE CONSTANT GARDENER) directs this adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago’s novel. An unexplained epidemic of blindness strikes an unknown city, and the stricken are forced to depend on each other and the single sighted person in their midst.

Two strangers become the pawns of a mysterious woman they have never met, but who seems to know their every move. Realizing they are being used to further her diabolical plot, they must work together to outwit the woman before she has them killed.