Campion’s spellbinding ‘Bright Star” a thing of beauty
It begins like a Jane Austen comedy of manners, with genteel country folk in top hats and high-waisted frocks visiting each other’s parlors, trading repartee. But filmmaker Jane Campion has something far more rapturous, mysterious, and absorbing in mind for her new film, Bright Star. Working from a real-life romance in the life of Romantic-era English poet John Keats, Campion creates an achingly lovely ode to youthful passion, and the wellspring of art.

ASTRO BOY A futuristic Pinocchio for a generation that grew up with the old Japanese cartoon series, this is a big screen adaptation of the story of a boy robot built by a lonely inventor who finds acceptance when he defends his city against a band of monster robots. Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, and  Kristen Bell provide voices. David Bowers (Flushed Away) directs. (PG)
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Mother, sons, come of age in funny, affectionate ‘My One And Only’

Nobody has ever mistaken George Hamilton for a serious actor—including himself. Indeed, his self-deprecating sense of humor has served him well throughout a long career that began as a male starlet in the early 1950s and segued well into the age of irony, where Hamilton is best known for his killer tan, and comedy spoofs like Zorro, The Gay Blade. So it’s not surprising to find so much sly wit and affectionate good humor in My One And Only, a fictionalized memoir produced by Hamilton about his own teen years with his eccentric, yet intrepid, mother.

CLOUDY WTH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS Adapted from the children's picture book by Judi and Ron Barrett, this animated feature revolves around a small-town inventor who creates a phenomenon by which food rains down from the sky. Bill Hader, Anna Faris, and Bruce Campbell provide voices. Chris Miller and Phil Lord direct. (PG) Starts Friday.

9 Rookie filmmaker Shane Acker expands his Oscar-nominated animation short into this "stitchpunk" puppet-animation feature. In a post-apocalyptic future, after the machines have oblitrated humanmankind, it's up to a plucky band of hybrid creatures imbued with the spark of life to revive the spirit of humanity. Elijah Wood, Christpher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, and John C. Reilly provide voices.  (PG-13) 79 minutes.

Francis Ford Coppola is out of the giant, make-or-break blockbuster biz and back making small indie movies for the sheer joy of it. His newest, Tetro, is such an adventure in technique, style, and pure cinematic brio, it almost doesn’t matter that the story gets away from him the fourth act, and the film runs about 30 minutes too long. You can have too much of a good thing, and the sins of admission in Tetro detract from otherwise masterful storytelling, but there’s still plenty of swoony delight to be had in the look of the film and the operatic scope of its story.

Veteran action movie director Kathryn Bigelow is getting plenty of buzz over this epic drama about U.S. military bomb squad technicians risking their lives in the streets of Baghdad. Prize winner at the 2008 Venice Film Festival, and called by one critic "the first great Iraq War movie," the film stars Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty as part of the counter-insurgency force specially trained in diffusing homemade bombs whose unit is taken over by a reckless new tam leader (Jeremy Renner) just weeks before their tour of duty is up. Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, and David Morse have featured roles. (R) 131 minutes.

Filmmaker Nati Baratz goes behind the scenes into the secret and mysterious world of Tibetan Buddhism for this documentary about the search for the reincarnation of a recently deceased holy man. Given his mission by the Dalai Lama himself, a young monk who grew up attending the holy man consults astrologers and sets out for a remote village, where he goes door-to-door in hopes of being enlightened enough to recognize his former master in the child he seeks. (Not rated) 102 minutes.