By Tatiana Craine

The Kids Are All Right”The Kids Are All Right” became a critic favorite upon its premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The refreshing film offers a daring look at what defines a modern family and the dynamic ties that bind them. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening star as a married California couple with two children they had through artificial insemination. The day finally comes when the teenage kids want to find their biological father (played by Mark Ruffalo). When he joins their lives, he upsets the family balance much to the chagrin of Bening’s character Nic. The film covers topics from alcoholism to marriage definitions with frank wit and sentiment. “The Kids Are All Right” is the little indie movie that could, chugging its way to critical acclaim and huge box office profits. Fortunately this film will translate well to DVD and rental, with the real gem being the heart of the story and not special effects.

The Other Guys

Marky Mark must have a thing for playing cops-but truth be told, he’s good at it. After a serious turn as a hard-ass cop in “The Departed,” his newest flick from the force shows a different side to the law enforcement team. Wahlberg stars with ubiquitous Hollywood funny man Will Ferrell in “The Other Guys,” yet another take on the classic police partner comedy. As a kind of odd-couple in the department after being assigned to each other, their relationship grows from pure hatred to mellow respect for one another. Full of laughs, sometimes at the expense of political correctness (the Prius Ferrell’s character drives often gets referred to as a certain part of the female anatomy and plenty of people die for laughs-literally), the film is chock-full of explosions and shoot-em-up scenes for the cop-movie junkies in all of us. Eva Mendes makes a hilarious turn as Ferrell’s “plain” wife during a comedically well-timed dinner scene. Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock, also make appearances in the film. Though funny at times, this one might better be left for a rental than a hefty ticket price.

Inception

Months before “Inception” stormed theaters this summer, people were talking, wondering, thinking: What the heck is this movie about? The cryptic trailer featured the now infamous line, “There’s one thing you should know about me. I specialize in a very specific type of security. Subconscious security,” but precious little else about the plot. When the film came out, audiences flocked to theaters to decipher the mystery behind the trailer and found themselves awed by surreal visual effects and a complex story line to boggle the mind. Critics loved the film, a breath of fresh air among plenty of dumbed-down summer blockbusters. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a stealthy dream extractor who assembles a team of experts to plant an idea in the mind of the heir to a corporation. Also starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard and Ellen Page, the film is a force to reckon with, and is best seen on the silver screen.