Review: There may be a credit crunch going on, but this non-stop laughing spree is worth the price of a ticket.

Story: Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) is a big-spending but cash-poor shopaholic who has dreams of working for her favorite fashion magazine but, ironically, is given a job as a columnist for a financial magazine from the same publisher. Of course, not being the perfect candidate to dole out advice on managing money, she butts heads with her good-looking but work-obsessed editor (Hugh Dancy) – until, this being a romantic comedy, the sparks start flying between them. Her efforts to conquer her addictions, hit her fashion-career goals and find love and contentment carry this lightweight concoction.

Acting: Confessions is worth the ride if only to establish Fisher as a comic star in her own right. So good in supporting roles in movies like Wedding Crashers, she gets to shine, showing humor, heart and chutzpah as a girl who never met a credit card she didn’t like. She turns a character who could have been gratingly annoying into someone even the non-shopaholics in the audience can easily identify with and root for. Dancy is a great foil and perfect opposite in the great tradition of romantic comedies going back to the ’30s and ’40s. A raft of familiar amusing faces also turn up, including John Lithgow as the magazine magnate, John Goodman and Joan Cusack as Rebecca’s loopy parents and the wonderful Kristin Scott Thomas as a somewhat clueless French fashion editor. But pay special attention to newcomer Krysten Ritter as Fisher’s moneybags roommate.

Direction: Australian P.J. Hogan certainly has shown a penchant for this kind of comedy, first with the sleeper hit Muriel’s Wedding and then the Julia Roberts smash, My Best Friend’s Wedding. He knows when to tone it down and go for heart, which is key to making a broad comedy like this work overall. The film also makes New York terrific, Technicolored, bright and inviting. It helps that the bestselling books by Sophie Kinsella, on which the script is based, provide such smart core material. Whether timing in the current economic crisis is right for a movie about an upscale shopaholic is beside the point. Clearly, this is more fantasy now than ever, and that’s probably all good.

Bottom Line: Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.

Review: Remake. Reboot. Rehash. Any way you slice it, the new Friday the 13th is the same-old, same-old.

Story: Crystal Lake. Dumb kids in the woods. Sex, drugs, booze. A hulking maniac in a hockey mask, wielding a machete. Yeah, that about sums it up.

Acting: Are you kidding? The new Jason, Derek Mears, probably fares best among the actors, because he doesn’t have a single word of dialogue. Everyone else unfortunate enough to stumble in front of the camera – Jared Padalecki, Amanda Righetti, Danielle Panabaker, Travis Van Winkle – is basically fodder for the slaughter. Some of them get naked. Most of them get dead. Some die more gorily than others. No one dies quickly enough.

Direction: Having previously (and woefully) directed the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director Marcus Nispel does his best – and worst – to resurrect yet another popular horror franchise from the past. He also adds absolutely nothing new to the formula. Quite frankly, anyone could have directed this film. Judging by the results, anyone did. This is the 12th Friday the 13th film, for those keeping score at home, and with any luck it’ll be the last. Of course, it won’t be. But we can always hope.

Bottom Line: Hollywood.com rated this film 1 star.

Review: A globe-hopping suspense thriller with bankers as the villains. Now that’s timely!

Story: Looking like it was ripped from the headlines, The International focuses on the corrupt dealings of a fictional bank that will go to any means possible to serve as a conduit for illegal weapons sales to people who shouldn’t be getting them. Enter an Interpol agent (Clive Owen), who is teamed with a New York assistant District Attorney (Naomi Watts) to go after a network of suave, crafty Europeans bent on carrying out their dirty business as they always have. Following their trail around the world in such locales as Berlin, Italy, New York and Istanbul, the two become targets in an unending high stakes game of murder and intrigue.

Acting: Looking more unkempt and unshaven than ever, Owen totally connects with the role of an eccentric agent who stumbles on to a worldwide conspiracy which eventually leads to a group of corrupt bankers. Who knew? It makes you realize what an ideal James Bond he would have been. Unfortunately, Watts just isn’t his match. She comes across as bland and lost, never able to get a beat on this lawyer who is caught up in an international scandal. Forced to utter obvious lines like, “This isn’t over” at the 80-minute mark, she has zero chemistry opposite Owen.

Direction: German director Tom Twyker, who broke out with the riveting and stylish Run Lola Run 10 years ago, has his best outing since that film, carefully navigating the numerous and colorful locations with just enough pacing and attention to detail to keep this from turning into yet another Bourne ripoff. He seems totally in control of the complicated and dense storyline, pulling off a sensational set piece at New York’s Guggenheim Museum (actually meticulously re-created in a Berlin warehouse), where Owen gets involved in a shootout to end all shootouts with numerous bad guys. It’s a stunning scene, running about 15 minutes – and a textbook example of how to shoot an action sequence. It’s reminiscent of some of the best Cold War spy thrillers of the ’60s and ’70s, and that’s a high compliment. See it.

Bottom Line: Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.