STARRING Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Kathy Bates, Quinton Aaron
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY John Lee Hancock

It would be hard to find a sunnier slice of life than this adaptation of Michael Lewis' nonfiction best-seller, in which a wealthy Memphis couple (Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw) take in a burly home-less teen named Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) just because he needs a place to stay. Oher goes on to become a football prodigy (now playing for the Baltimore Ravens). Hancock (The Alamo) zeroed in on Bullock early on, knowing he had to make his heroine believable. ''Sandy's been underappreciated as a dramatic actress,'' says Hancock, who sold Bullock on the role by arranging a meeting with the no-nonsense do-gooder she'd portray. ''Afterward, Sandy said, 'Playing her terrifies me, but in a good way. She's not any stereotype of a Southern steel magnolia. She's a one-off deal.''' It takes one to know one.

STARRING Dwayne ''The Rock'' Johnson, Justin Long, Jessica Biel, Gary Oldman, Seann William Scott, John Cleese
WRITTEN BY Joe Stillman
DIRECTED BY Jorge Blanco

Hey, Justin Long, star of He's Just Not That Into You and Drag Me to Hell, tell us about your new animated sci-fi comedy, Planet 51! ''It's basically about a planet of aliens. They would be aliens to us, obviously not to themselves. Dwayne Johnson — is it Dwayne the Rock? Mr. Rock? — he voices the human from Earth who lands on the planet. I voice an alien — but, again, I hate using that word because I'm in no way alien to myself. They're just a race of people on this planet, Planet 51, and a lot of the comedy comes from how alien they consider this human, who is obviously out of his element. It's a fish-out-of-water tale — a human-out-of-Earth tale!'' Thanks, Justin! We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

STARRING Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
WRITTEN BY Melissa Rosenberg
DIRECTED BY Chris Weitz

Kristen Stewart lies on a beige carpet, surrounded by a mess of pink roses and broken crystal. Her sweater is ripped, revealing a bloody gash on her right arm. It's April in Vancouver, and the New Moon cast is filming Bella Swan's climactic 18th-birthday celebration — the one cut short after an innocent paper cut turns the Cullen family, in one split second, from civilized ''vegetarian'' vampires into six beastly creatures hungry for sweet human blood. Director Chris Weitz wants another take of Edward (Robert Pattinson) fighting off his vampire brother Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), as Stewart lies injured in the background. This is the third freezing night in a row that the cast has worked until dawn, but that doesn't stop the set from feeling warm and jovial. Pattinson mugs for the movie camera between takes and teases his costar for just lying on the floor in the midst of all the vamp-on-vamp violence. ''Do you want Kristen to give us a little life back there?'' he jokes to the director. Kristen smiles. ''I'm just writhing down here,'' she says. ''A lot of writhing. I writhe really well.''

So do Twilight fans. Right now, for instance, millions of them around the world are writhing in delicious agony as they wait for New Moon to hit theaters on Nov. 20. Last year Twilight, the first adaptation of author Stephenie Meyer's series, grossed close to $400 million worldwide and set Stewart and Pattinson on the road to superstardom — and superscrutiny. Now the team is back with New Moon, though the sequel is a different beast — and one that's not as easy to tame. Meyer's second book is steeped in heartbreak and sadness, focusing on Bella's road to recovery after Edward smashes her heart into a million pieces and then vanishes. In addition to the melodrama, the movie has to make do with very little of the dreamy Edward Cullen. Instead, it mainly concerns the burgeoning relationship between Bella and her friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who transforms into a gnarling werewolf. Pattinson couldn't be happier with his downsized role. ''It was a stress-free job for three months,'' says the actor, 23, in his charming British lilt. ''All the pressure was on Taylor.''

STARRING Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Pedro Almodóvar

After four films together, Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz are the dearest of friends. Just not while they're shooting. ''We don't do the things that we normally do as friends when we are working,'' says Cruz, who name-checked Almodóvar in her Oscar acceptance speech earlier this year (she won for Best Supporting Actress in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona). ''We don't talk about our private things on set. We don't hang out at night or go to the cinema. But in the morning, we get to the set and we know how the other one has slept and who's in a good mood or a bad mood.''

There are echoes of the duo's real-life relationship in Broken Embraces, a noirish Spanish-language drama about an aspiring actress named Lena (Cruz) who develops a close bond with Mateo (Lluís Homar), a filmmaker she idolizes. ''When I finished the screenplay, the character was slightly older than Penélope and, more importantly, very different in personality,'' says Almodóvar. ''But I offered her the part precisely as a challenge. She would have to use a register that she had never explored before to express the character's fatality, her harshness, and that impassiveness that some noir heroines display.'' Cruz notes another difference between art and reality: ''When I met Pedro, I was even more obsessed with him than Lena is with Mateo.''