The Christian Century

Moneyball has a slick, entertaining script by two pros, Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian, and it's briskly directed by Bennett Miller.

In The Help, set during the civil rights era, an aspiring journalist decides to write a book about the African-American domestics in the small Missis­sippi town where she grew up. The movie, adapted by Tate Taylor from Kathryn Stockett's best seller, is a glossy Hollywood potboiler that uses a serious theme and historical context as cover.

There's never been anything quite like the Harry Potter movies. The finale, Deathly Hallows, Part 2, is all one might hope.

Dramatic adaptations of Char­lotte Brontë's Jane Eyre tend to go for romantic embroidery and Gothic grandilo­quence. But the new movie version feels pared down in all respects except the emotional. It has a piercing ferocity.

True Grit is the last thing you'd ex­pect from the movies' most resolutely ironic brother act, the writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen: a labor of love. They set out to adapt Charles Portis's charming novel faithfully, correcting the errors of the 1969 Henry Hathaway version, a stock western memorable only for John Wayne's performance as the tippling marshal Rooster Cogburn.

The third Narnia film features a new director, Michael Apted. The good news is that Dawn Treader is a worthy successor to Andrew Adamson's splendiferous earlier entries.

David Fincher's The Social Net­work, with a script by the mon­arch of machine-gun banter, Aaron Sor­kin (The West Wing), is a smart, funny film that tells the story of how Facebook came into being. It's a comedy of manners about a desperately uncool Harvard undergrad who creates the most popular club in the world and declares himself president.