DD 5.1

At its core, Munich is a straightforward thriller. Based on the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas, itís built on a relatively stock movie premise, the revenge plot: innocent people are killed, the bad guys got away with it, and someone has to make them pay. But director Steven Spielberg uses that as a starting point to delve into complex ethical questions about the cyclic nature of revenge and the moral price of violence. The movie starts with a rush.

Released amidst rumors of romance between costars Angelina Jolie and soon-to-be-divorced Brad Pitt, Mr. and Mrs. Smith offers automatic weapons and high explosives as the cure for marital boredom. The premise of this exhausting action-comedy (no relation to the 1941 Alfred Hitchcock comedy starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery) is that the unhappily married Smiths (Pitt and Jolie) will improve their relationship once they discover their mutually-hidden identities as world-class assassins, but things get complicated when their secret-agency bosses order them to rub each other out.

The passion of mad love and the cold calculations of social climbing collide in Woody Allen's Match Point. Former tennis pro Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Velvet Goldmine) stumbles into good fortune when Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer, Lovely & Amazing), the daughter of a wealthy businessman, falls in love with him. But when Chris meets Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson, Lost in Translation), a much deeper passion is stirred--and his desire isn't deterred when he discovers that Nola is already dating Chloe's brother.

Pierce Brosnan gives one of his finest performances in The Matador, a low-key buddy comedy with an agreeably sinister twist. Light-years from his former James Bond image, Brosnan is unshaven, unnerved and unpredictable as freelance assassin Julian Noble, who encounters desperate businessman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) in the bar of a modern Mexico City hotel. Danny is intrigued when Julian reveals that he's a "facilitator of fatalities," and his wife "Bean" (Hope Davis) is equally fascinated when Julian shows up unexpectedly, six months later, at Danny's home in Denver.

Without force-feeding its timely message, Good Night, and Good Luck illuminates history to enlighten our present, when the need for a free and independent press is more important than ever. In 90 breathtaking minutes of efficient and intricate storytelling, writer-director George Clooney and cowriter Grant Heslov pay honorable tribute to the journalistic integrity of legendary CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow, Director George Clooney who confronted the virulent and overzealous anti-Communist witch-hunting of Wisconsin Sen.

Harry's fourth summer and the following year at Hogwarts are marked by the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, in which student representatives from three different wizarding schools compete in a series of increasingly challenging contests. However, Voldemort's Death Eaters are gaining strength and even creating the Dark Mark giving evidence that the Dark Lord is ready to rise again.

If you prefer your cataclysms free of terrorist overtones and your superheroes unburdened by Freudian subtext-sometimes a comic book is just a comic book, after all-you could do worse than this flick. Four scientists and their corporate sponsor (guess who's the bad guy) are conducting experiments on a space station when they're hit by an unexpectedly powerful blast of solar radiation, altering their DNA and giving them freakish powers that cleverly reflect their personalities.

A light farce dressed up as a lush 18th century costume drama, Casanova gives a fictional spin to the exploits of history's most rakish seducer of women. As played by Heath Ledger, this Casanova bears no resemblance to Donald Sutherland's unrepentant portrayal in Fellini's Casanova, filmed 30 years earlier. Instead, the great ladies' man of Venice is just biding time by bedding women, waiting for true love (and the return his long-absent mother) to settle down into blissful monogamy.

Like the animated series itís based on, Aeon Flux is the kind of sci-fi thatís best appreciated by the MTV generation. Itís a serious attempt at stylized, futuristic action/adventure (the title character, played by Charlize Theron, is essentially a female James Bond for the cyberpunk era) and taken for what it is, itís not all that bad. The action takes place in the year 2415, four centuries after a virus nearly decimated the human race, leaving only five million survivors in a utopian city called Bregna.

Basic Instinct 2 sure has a funny way of holding your attention. It's not just Sharon Stone's trash-talk and occasional nudity that keeps you watching, but also the way she gamely earns every cent of her $14 million paycheck, vamping like a real pro in her second outing as mystery novelist and alleged serial killer Catherine Tramell. Now living in London, Catherine sets her lethal sights on Michael Glass (David Morrissey), the control-freak psychiatrist assigned to evaluate her as a risk-addicted suspect in the "accidental" killing of a star soccer player.