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Angelina Jolie again steps up to the action star plate and easily hits a triple.

At a cover company for the CIA, a Russian defector calling himself Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) walks in off the street claiming to have important information. Agent Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) confronts the man, trying to determine the validity of what he has to say. Orlov spins a tale of conspiracy and cold war machinations, ending with the claim that the Russian president will be killed by a covert sleeper agent… named Evelyn Salt. Knowing protocol would prevent her from doing so, Salt attempts to contact her husband to ensure his safety since her name is in the open, but when the attempt fails, Salt uses her considerable skills to exit the building before being captured. Fellow agent and friend Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) is willing to give Salt the benefit of the doubt, but Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has a higher concern: has a sleeper agent just been activated?

With more than a hat tip to the Jason Bourne film series, Salt burns like an old school cold war thriller with a role that Angelina Jolie embodies naturally. Full of chases, fast fights, gun play, and car crunching, the question of Salt’s motivations drive the story while Jolie makes it look incredibly easy. Practical special effects are the order of the day, and enlisting a fictional sect of Russian patriots looking to restore their lost world superpower glory makes for a fresh but familiar villain to struggle against. While all of the above will get audience involved with Salt, it’s the revelation and risks the script was willing to take that make it memorable.

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Have you ever been to a popular arts convention? And by “popular arts,” I mean any and/or all of the following: comics, movies, science fiction, horror, tattoos, anime, and who knows what else.

If you have, you know how EXPENSIVE they can be. Hotel rooms, transportation, meals, and incidentals… yeesh. And that’s not including spending money. Your best hope is to buddy up with as many fellow fans as you can to divide the costs or work hard to save up big; no one likes to have to decide on their next three meals or starve to buy that signed, minted, limited-production whatever that you’ll never find again that you didn’t even know existed before right now.

But if you’re just in it for the announcements, there’s plenty of other people going who will be more than happy to email, update, and tweet you whatever they just saw or found out. To all of them, I say support them any way you can, live vicariously through them, and throw a little of the money you saved on the stuff they’re peddling so they can afford to keep doing it. One day, you, too, may find yourself rubbing elbows with your favorite creators, writers, actors, directors, and artists, and someone else will have only your sacrifice of time and money to experience it through.

Con on!

Overlong yet awesome. What else did you expect from a Christopher Nolan flick?

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a very special kind of thief: he steals from your mind. A billionaire industrialist (Ken Watanabe) hires Cobb to do just the opposite, planting the seed of an idea, an inception. Cobb’s specialized team includes an architect who can design the environment of a dream (Ellen Page), a forger who can assume the identity of people a target knows (Tom Hardy), and a handful of specialists who know how to get around inside a dream. In addition to setting up when the mission will take place, the group must also plan their escape from the dream as well as create multiple layers of engagement to obscure their intentions from the target (Cillian Murphy.) Unfortunately, Cobb himself carries secrets that could not only thwart the mission but possibly doom them all to being unable to wake ever again.

Moviegoers have experienced this kind of dream invasion concept before: Dreamscape, Total Recall, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and pretty much the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series to name a few. Writer/director Christopher Nolan starts with these ideas and creates his own set of rules while weaving multiple story lines in and around them, all to an engaging effect. Add to this the possibility that someone might be trained or instructed to ward off such an attack and that one of the team members has a few psychological issues of their own, and the stage is set for plenty of drama. Although the middle and final act both leave room for a bit of trimming that could have moved the film along a little quicker, there’s a lot of story to tell, and Nolan manages to balance it all while making you care about the characters it’s happening to.

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So, Twilighters, you didn’t think there would be consequences? Now we have to endure another spoof film… thanks guys! Go ahead and watch the trailer here, then place bets on whether or not there’s anything funnier in the actual film.

A little levity, self-awareness, and long-overdue back stories make the latest Twilight installment not only watchable but (dare I say it?) actually enjoyable.

The date is set. Once Bella (Kristen Stewart) graduates, Edward (Robert Pattinson) will turn her into a vampire… if she marries him. Jacob (Taylor Lautner), on the other hand, is determined that if he can convince Bella to admit her feelings for him, he might still have a chance with her. Meanwhile, an army of newborn vampires is amassing in Seattle while vengeful Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) is nowhere to be seen. As the Cullen clan tries to determine the next move of their enemies, everyone is left wondering: how long before Jane (Dakota Fanning) and the rest of the Volturi become involved again?

Whether the ‘tweens know it or not, that weird thing happening to their precious Twilight saga is something called “maturity.” Even the first Harry Potter film or two suffered from the younger cast members still finding their acting chops while leaning on the seasoned veterans in the film to make it work, but Twilight has been leaning on its three leads from the start. Fortunately, Robert Pattinson’s Edward is starting to look less smug and more dependable, Taylor Lautner’s Jacob is showing more moves than just forgetting where he left his shirt, and Kristen Stewart’s Bella is actually shaping up to be a responsible adult instead of merely a brooding must-have emo teen.

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