Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's Milk (Focus Features)

Filmmaker Gus Van Sant leaves his usual dreamy, elliptical storytelling behind to deliver a more conventionally structured narrative about unconventional activist and politician Harvey Milk in his new film Milk (opening at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). The film is equal parts biography and look back on the roots of gay activism. Van Sant makes superb use of archival footage to chronicle Milk's rise to political power as California's first openly gay elected official. Too bad the film didn't open before this year's election, maybe the film's plea for tolerance could have swayed some voters about Proposition 8. The film looks to an election some three decades ago in which Milk helped organize opposition to a proposition (Prop 6) that would have banned gays from teaching in California. That bill's defeat contrasts with this year's passage of a ban on same sex marriage, and the film makes you realize that some things and some attitudes have not changed and maybe even are moving backwards. Sean Penn stars as Milk and his performance seems self-conscious at first but grows in strength. Listen to the discussion about the film on this month's KPBS Film Club of the Air.

Companion viewing: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, To Die For, The Best Man

Last Thursday I went to the Edwards Mira Mesa Cinemas to do a feature for NPR on Twilight fans waiting in line for the first minute-after-midnight screening of their long-awaited film. When I confessed to the throng of teenage girls waiting in line to not having read any of the books, I was chastised and urged to immediately go out and get them. I have to admit there was a distinct sense of fun and excitement seeing people -- mostly teenage girls and women -- bundled up outside a movie theater where some had been waiting since 9:30am. That's the kind of frenzy you usually see with Star Wars or Harry Potter. But I had made a decision to see the film without reading the book so I could make an objective judgment on the film as a stand alone work. You can take a look at the highlights from the Twilight Comic-Con panel to get a sense of what the frenzy is like. Clips are courtesy of Comic-Con.

Jason Statham hits the road again as the professional driver in Transporter 3 (Lionsgate)

By Janeane White

What is there to say about Transporters 3 (opening Novemver 26 throughout San Diego)? The movie itself was good but I preferred the previous films in the series. I'm not sure if it was because of the basic storyline or the need for even more action. There were plenty of amazing stunts and fight scenes and Jason Statham delivers an awesome performance as usual. The movie starts off with Frank (Statham) and his French detective buddy off fishing while some guy is running from the cops through the middle of town. Later on this guy ends up crashing through Frank's front wall of his house and Frank desperately tries to help once he realizes that the mad man is a friend of his. This guy tries to warn Frank not to take him away from the car but he doesn't listen. Apparently he and the girl in the car with him were equipped with a special bracelet that is an explosive and when you travel to far away from the car, BOOM! Frank is then taken hostage and told that he had to complete the mission that the previous guy failed. He unfortunately agrees and then the journey begins.

This movie had a lot of amazing action but I still feel like it could have been better. Overall I do think it was a great movie but like all sequels, I feel that it lacked in comparison to the original. There wasn't as much action and all the rules that Frank tried so hard to up hold, he breaks in one way or another. I felt that it was a different guy then the one that all of us are used to seeing up on the big screen. Frank was still the overwhelming bad boy but I felt that he lacked some of his well-known fierceness.

--Janeane White is a senior at Mount Miguel High School. She enjoys movies and spends all her time at the theater. She is also interested in special effects makeup done in the movies. She is an honors student and is currently working towards early graduation. Some of her favorite movies include Queen of the Damned, Hellboy, The Descent, the Underworld series, and the Saw series.

As William Shatner and what remains of his original Enterprise crew grow increasingly older, Paramount has had to consider what it could do to reboot the popular Star Trek franchise. The answer: Go back in time and show Kirk and company when they were young so the franchise could snare a new generation of both actors and hopefully fans. The result is J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (also know as Start Trek Zero or Star Trek XI) that's set to look at how the crew of the Enterprise first got together. I have yet to be impressed by Abrams (Cloverfield was a bust for me and Lost never really hooked me) but I will go see any film with Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead fame). Pegg plays the young Scotty while Chris Pine takes on Kirk and and Heroes' Zachary Quinto is Spock. Here's the second trailer courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn enjoy Four Christmases (New Line)

By Janeane White

Four Christmases (opens November 26 throughout San Diego) is an amazingly funny movie. It's about this couple -- Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) -- that has been dating for three years yet still don't know each other as well as they think they do. Every year they go on some vacation around the world for the holidays and make up some lame excuse to tell their families as to why. They claim they are helping children in third world countries make quilts or are helping vaccinate people on some island because you see "you can't spell families without lies," as brad and his family would say. Every year for every occasion there is a different excuse. This year they plan to go to Fiji but their flight gets cancelled due to weather problems. to make things worse they end up being filmed for the news about their cancelled flight. Their families see this footage and immediately start calling and arranging for them to come over and spend the holidays with them. This leads to them learning things about each that they thought they would never speak about again. Kate learns Brad's real name and Brad learns Kate isn't what she used to be.

I loved this movie! It was hilarious. The lines that were said and the things that these characters had to endure were great. Vaughn and Witherspoon made such a perfect couple too. They believed in the same views and they totally loved each other. They both agreed that marriage wasn't for them but through the movie you see a change in their point of view. I think that it's important for couples to know everything about their partner and sometimes it's necessary. This movie does a good job of showing how most people grow up in insane households and that everyone has some sort of embarrassing past. These two just take it to the extreme though. When most say their family is crazy, it's usually an overstatement. But in this case it is true.

I think that if you get a chance to see Four Christmases (rated PG-13 for some sexual humor and language) you definitely should. It was a great film and kept me laughing pretty much the whole time. I give this film a thumbs up!

--Janeane White is a senior at Mount Miguel High School. She enjoys movies and spends all her time at the theater. She is also interested in special effects makeup done in the movies. She is an honors student and is currently working towards early graduation. Some of her favorite movies include Queen of the Damned, Hellboy, The Descent, the Underworld series, and the Saw series.

Director Catherine Hardwicke, actress Kristen Stewart and author Stephenie Meyer on the set of Twilight (Summit)

By Janeane White

Twilight (opened November 21 throughout San Diego) as both a movie and a book is an overall excellent story: A young clumsy girl falls in love with the most dangerous person she could ever meet and gets in to even more trouble from there.

But I felt that the book and the movie were almost two entirely different stories. The movie had changed important scenes and added extras just to make it more appealing to the audience. But that was unnecessary because it was already primed to be a massive movie hit because of the books' success. Millions of girls and women turned up to see the film in hopes of seeing what they have been picturing in their minds to be this amazingly hot vampire family with this ditsy chick. I felt that the book was perfect all by its self. Some of my favorite chapters in the book were distorted in the movie and it seriously disappointed me. I know that filmmakers can't adapt every detail from a book to the movie because the movie would be extremely long and people would lose interest.

Towards the end, huge chunks of the book where skipped and some of these chunks are important. In the end the scenes were chopped up and edited even more, making the movie feel rushed. It was two hours long but I felt like it was only half of that and that the movie should have been made longer. My favorite two scenes from the book are when Edward takes Bella to the meadow for the first time on their first real date and he kisses her for the first time. The second scene is when Bella tells Edward she isn't scared of him at all in his room -- he crouched, growled, lounged and attacked her in a kidding manner just to show how strong and powerful he is. In the movie Bella and Edward ditch school when she confronts him about knowing what he is. They run through the woods and magically find this meadow where they just laid together. The first kiss, which was suppose to be there, was in her room and it was suppose to be a bare touch of lips. But in the film it was much more then that. In the book that would have been to much because Edward doesn't have that kind of control. This aggravated me. In the other scene, instead of him attacking Bella, he basically flew into the trees with her on his back. I was mad at how the fight that Edward had with James (the bad vampire) to protect Bella wasn't in the book either. They added it for entertainment purposes.

Overall I was disappointed in Twilight (rated PG-13 for some violence and a scene of sensuality), especially in Edward. I had pictured some extremely hot guy with a velvet voice and when I saw who played him in the movie the first thought that came to my mind was "what a let down." I just thought everything was wrong and I wish I didn't see the movie. For people who have read the book, expect a disappointment. For everyone else, this might be an acceptable movie. It has a good storyline and it's cute. It really is a good movie but it's nothing in comparison to the book.

--Janeane White is a senior at Mount Miguel High School. She enjoys movies and spends all her time at the theater. She is also interested in special effects makeup done in the movies. She is an honors student and is currently working towards early graduation. Some of her favorite movies include Queen of the Damned, Hellboy, The Descent, the Underworld series, and the Saw series.

The Muscles from Brussels... Mr. Jean-Claude Van Damme as himself in JCVD (Peace Arch Entertainment)

JCVD (opening at Landmark's Ken Cinemas) provides a nice lead in to the upcoming release of The Wrestler. Both films focus on former stars that have faded - JCVD offers Jean-Claude Van Damme and The Wrestler serves up a battered Mickey Rourke. They also focus on two men who have relied on their bodies and physical appearances, and now with age have found that both are letting them down in one way or another. But while we've always known that Rourke was a skilled actor, Van Damme actually surprises us with his turn as himself in JCVD, which proves to be part autobiography and part satire.

Filmmaker Danny Boyle came by the KPBS Studios last week for an interview about his latest film Slumdog Millionaire (now playing at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Boyle proved to be a lively interview with great passion for filmmaking. He also revealed how the city of Mumbai inspired and energized him. Hope you enjoy this interview feature with clips from the film and behind the scenes footage. And go see the film, it's brilliant!

Kristen Stewart is Bella and Robert Pattinson is Edward in the eagerly anticipated adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight (Summit)

By Lily Canones

Twilight (opening November 21 throughout San Diego), one of the top selling books across America, is written by Stephenie Meyer. Now it has become a major motion picture. Twilight is a story about a pair of star-crossed lovebirds, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) who, at first, become friends and then happens to fall deeply in love with each other. It's that typical romance story between two teenagers. The only odd thing about it is that Edward is a vampire. Even though that is a factor that Bella discovers about him, she doesn't care one bit who or what Edward really is, the only thing that matters to her is that she is "unconditionally and irrevocably" in love with him.

I'm not much of a bookworm, so reading books is a rare thing for me to do. When I first heard of Twilight, I just said to myself, "Oh, it's just another book." But when a lot of people began buying and reading the book, it made me want to read it too. I have read only a portion of the first book because of a busy schedule but so far Twilight has completely drawn me in.

Because I haven't finished reading Twilight, there's very little I can compare to the movie. So far, the scenes from the book are the same in the movie, as is the storyline. I do know for a fact that there are some parts in the movie that are added while others are taken away from the book.

The movie Twilight was absolutely amazing! I personally give it two thumbs up and highly recommend it for everyone. While watching the film, I felt so drawn into it just like the book. The audience too was also drawn in, and added some enthusiasm with their squeals and screams at various points in the movie. But since I was so into the movie, the noise didn't bother me at all. I felt a rush of excitement while watching the movie and that made me more excited about reading the rest of Twilight and the rest of the Twilight Saga. I do want to say that the director, Catherine Hardwicke, has done an excellent job in choosing the actors for Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. She has also done an excellent job in making the book into a film. I really do consider Twilight as now my most favorite vampire romance movie of all time. Go watch it, it's totally worth some cash.

--Lily Canones is a senior at Mount Miguel High School. She became a Teen Critic because she wanted to share her perspective and opinions on new movies. She loves horror movies and Asian movies. Most of the horror movies she watches are originally from Asia and she counts the original Thai version of Shutter as one of her favorites of all time.

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight)

Filmmaker Danny Boyle may be best known for his dark drug story Trainspotting. But now he delivers what might best be described as something of a gritty romantic fairy tale. Slumdog Millionaire (opening November 21 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) is something of a kindred spirit to Boyle's Millions as it spins a narrative rooted in the real world but able transcend reality. You can listen to my radio feature or check out the web video feature on Slumdog Millionaire tomorrow.