I don't know the last time I felt like a kid at the movies, but while watching Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D this past week, I honestly reverted to my 8-year-old self. That isn't to say the movie is necessarily as good as the movies that astonished me as a kid -- because of the subject matter, I'd think about comparing it to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, both of which came out when I was around that age, and neither to which this film holds up in terms of originality or storytelling craft. But as far as holding onto my sense of wonder, Journey is up there.

Of course, it's necessary to point out that Journey would be nothing without the digital 3-D factor. It's actually the first live-action narrative feature to be shot and released in the new format (the non-fiction concert films, U2 3D and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour were technically the first live-action 3-D features), and while it's far from perfect, it is a terrific pioneer. I shall continue favoring the look of animated 3-D films, especially those directed as well as Monster House, and I anticipate that James Cameron's Avatar will blow away all live-action 3-D films released prior to its arrival. For now, though, I'm telling you, with the utmost cinemaphilic urgency: you need to see this ASAP.

Back in the old days, moviegoers used to get a cartoon before every movie. A lot of the classic Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Droopy, Popeye, Superman & Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons that many of us grew up watching on TV were once savored on the big screen. Eventually filmmakers began cranking out cartoons much more cheaply for television, and it was the end of an era -- almost. In recent years, Spike & Mike's touring cartoon festival has been a big success and other cartoon festivals have joined in. Earlier this year the five Oscar-nominated animated shorts opened in theaters, although together they ran nearly two hours. The new The Animation Show 4 collects some 18 shorts and series and runs less than 90 minutes. (See official site.)

Curator Mike Judge, the gentleman behind "Beavis & Butthead" and "King of the Hill," is definitely a man who likes his cartoons to get to the point, and so the three longest shorts here run about 7 minutes apiece. Steve Dildarian's Angry Unpaid Hooker is one of them. When his girlfriend arrives home early, Tim has trouble explaining the angry unpaid hooker sitting on his couch. The befuddled Tim will go on to star in his own series, "The Life and Times of Tim." Another epic is This Way Up, from the team of Smith & Foulkes. In it, a pair of long-faced morticians (father and son?) carries a sarcophagus to its final resting place, attempting to keep the box upright despite cruel fate's best attempts to knock it down. Stefan Mueller's Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen and Mr. Horlocker, from Germany, is the other "long" one. A cop investigates some noisy neighbors in an apartment building, but can't quite get the entire story until the same scenes are played out again, behind closed doors. This features the greatest cinematic drug trip since James Toback's Harvard Man.

(Note: We're re-posting the following review of The Wackness from The Tribeca Film Festival to coincide with the film's theatrical release this weekend.)

Finally, a film for kids of the 90's!

This is a hard review to write because it feels as if The Wackness was tailor-made for people like me: a male who grew up in New York City and graduated high school in 1994; the year this film was set. (Actually, I graduated in 1995, but it doesn't matter much: same kids, same lingo, same music, same surroundings). How do you review your childhood? These were all kids I hung out with, this was the music we listened to, these were the mix tapes we made and these were the girls we tried to hook up with ... but didn't. And, to some extent, it actually surprises me that so many people have loved The Wackness -- not because it's a terrible movie, mind you, but because kids who grew up in New York City during the '90s were annoying as all hell, with their "Yo, that was mad good" and their "He's got da skillz, kid!" Trust me, I know -- I was one of them.

Tell No One is a decidedly modern thriller that also, wisely, respects the great examples of the genre's past; strip away all the e-mail and web video and it's a classic Hitchcockian thriller, where a regular-but-resourceful man is squeezed between those who have committed a crime and the cops who think he's committed it. Based on a novel by American best-selling author Harlen Coben, Tell No One is transplanted -- gently -- to France by writer-director Guillame Canet, who turns Coben's breezy summertime page-turner into a breezy summertime movie. Yes, there are plot points in the film where you'll later go back and puzzle over how who knew what when, but trust me, you won't be thinking about that while Tell No One's running up on the big screen.

Alex (François Cluzet) and Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) are happy, childhood sweethearts who've made a real and adult marriage out of that foundation; they're relaxing at the family's country estate enjoying a little night swimming when Margot gets out of the water to check on something. There's a shout, a scream; Alex swims to help her ... and is knocked unconscious by a blow. And then a title jumps the film "Eight Years Later." It's an eye blink for us; for Alex, it's been an eternity.

Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.

Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou (where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Or attest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.

Have you read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates? Huh? You have? Then why the hell haven't you told me about it? What's your problem, anyway? And where has this book been all my life?

There's a movie version of Revolutionary Road on the way, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and directed by Sam Mendes. It's set to be released at Christmastime, and is widely expected to be a major player in the Oscar race. But here I have to betray this column's reason for being. F*** the movie. Read the book.

Published in 1961, Yates's first novel was more acclaimed than popular. It is a merciless, intense and pitch-black social satire – funny only in the most uncomfortable way, like being cleverly mocked by someone who sees clean through to your soul. The jacket pitches it as being about "the opulent desolation of the American suburbs," but Revolutionary Road is not another of those books that merely mocks the empty lives of well-to-do suburbanites. It's about our attitudes toward life and love and each other. Almost a half-century after it was published, it contains as much devastating insight into human nature as just about anything else I've ever read.

Well here's something you don't see every day: A big, flashy summertime "tentpole" movie that A) takes chances, B) bucks convention, and C) takes some real risks with its subject material. Obviously the safe approach is for Will Smith to do (yet another) easily-digestible (if somewhat mindless) blockbuster like I, Robot or I Am Legend or Independence Day -- but this time the endlessly profitable Will Smith is working with a rather distinctive director who refuses to cater to formula. That director would be Peter Berg, and this guy has yet to make a bad film.

Unfortunately the production history on Hancock is not a fantastic one. There was a revolving door of directors and script polishers before Columbia finally started production -- but there were still marketing issues, last-minute reshoots, and MPAA miseries to deal with. And yet, despite all that, Hancock arrives like a breath of weirdly fresh air for moviegoers who like a little heart and soul mixed in with their hyper-kinetic action mayhem. Toss some sharp wit and an impressive display of edge into the mix, and I think you may have one of my favorite movies of the summer. (Although one can plainly tell that there was some late cutting done to the flick, all in the name of the almighty PG-13 rating, of course.)

Drug consumer par excellence, Hunter Thompson's legendary hallucinogenic and boozy escapades have by now been sufficiently documented, not to mention brought to pitch-perfect cinematic life by Terry Gilliam's 1998 adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Less well known, however, is his lifelong political conscientiousness, which receives the lion's share of attention in Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Alex Gibney's (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) loving yet even-handed non-fiction bio of the notorious father of Gonzo journalism. Narrated by Johnny Depp (Gilliam's Fear and Loathing star), and overflowing with archival footage and interviews with friends and enemies, the film lays out the vital details of its subject's life, from his outcast adolescence in Louisville, Kentucky to his suicide in 2005. Comprehensiveness, however, isn't necessarily the goal, and thus while most prime topics are tackled, the greatest focus is paid to Thompson's failed attempt to run for governor of Aspen, Colorado on a legalize-drugs platform, and his coverage of the 1972 presidential election, which resulted in the classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

This one's a little heartwarming, folks, especially if you're predisposed (as I am) to admiring pretty much everything about the Pixar company.

Last fall, a young woman named Courtney saw the WALL-E teaser -- the one where Andrew Stanton talks about the meeting in 1994 where the story was first conceived -- and was reduced to a puddle of tears by its adorableness. Seems she has a soft spot for robots, and in particular for lonely, child-like, wide-eyed robots. So she videoed herself watching the trailer on her computer, knowing it would have the same effect on her again, and then she posted the video on her blog and on YouTube. (We've got it here after the jump.)

The video made its way around the Internets, as these things do, and Courtney began to get e-mails from people within the Pixar family who had seen it and appreciated her enthusiasm. Then one of the film's producers sent her a Pixar jacket as a Christmas gift, along with a note thanking her for the video.

And then they invited her to the film's wrap party in San Francisco.

If you have a girl between the ages of 4 and 12 in your life, chances are pretty good you've heard of American Girl. The wildly successful franchise has spawned a whole series of high-end dolls, doll clothes, doll furniture and accessories, books, cookbooks ... and, of course, movies. American Girls are enormously popular with both girls and parents seeking a wholesome alternative to the freakishly-thin Barbie doll image or the hooker-in-training look of those wretched Bratz dolls. As an added bonus, they encourage girls to learn a little history, without even realizing it .

The whole thing with American Girl is that each of the dolls comes from a different time period: there's Kristen, an immigrant girl from Sweden; Felicity, an American Revolution girl whose father is a Patriot, while her best friend's father is a Loyalist; Samantha, being raised by her wealthy grandmother in the 1920s, when women's suffrage and class difference were big issues; Molly, a girl whose father, a doctor, is off serving in the Second World War; Addy, who escapes slavery with her mother to search for her father and brother, and so on. Each doll has her own set of books: there's the intro book, the birthday book, the book where so-and-so learns a lesson, the Christmas book, and even a line of mystery books.