A piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love.

Every art form changes, often at rates and in ways that cause discomfort to its devotees. But the arts also have a remarkable ability to withstand and absorb those changes, and to prove wrong the prophecies of their demise.

My fellow critics and I may occasionally fault a movie for departing, in detail or in spirit, from its literary source, but the grousing of a few adult pedants is nothing compared to the wrath of several million bookish 10-year-olds. Their presumed demands, and the hovering spirit of Harry's creator, J. K. Rowling, inhibit this movie as it did the first Potter film.

War of the Worlds is rated PG-13. Much of the earth's population is wiped out, leaving very little time for sex or bad language.

We have reached a strange new place in marketing when tweets become full-page print ads.

STARTLING & INVENTIVE...This is not a movie that lets go of you easily.

I can't decide if this movie is so spectacularly, breathtakingly dumb as to induce stupidity in anyone who watches, or so brutally brilliant that it disarms all reason. What's the difference?