Captain America: The First Avenger is the summer’s final sweet indulgence in sentimentality, a 3-D tribute to 1940s retro-futurism and patriotic nostalgia. It shares imaginative space with Spielberg’s Raiders flicks and countless World War II movies. The tearjerking ending of this endearing truffle will almost make you stand and sing “We’ll Meet Again” without a hint of Kubrick’s irony.

Captain America ambles along in this glorified past, when America believed itself an Arsenal of Decency and the nation believed in better living through chemistry. American power is undeniably beneficial. Science advances with flying car optimism. Love is something delayed in the name of duty. It is as if revisionism never happened, warmly embracing the nation’s most idealistic values.

Horrible Bosses pretends to be a movie for all people who hate their bosses, but really it’s a film for all people who hate film. Directed by Seth Gordon and partly produced by Brett Ratner, it’s the a classic case of a movie that doesn’t seem that wretched, until you start to take it apart afterwards and realize how badly you wasted two hours. It has some funny moments, yes, but that barely hides the fact that it approaches a cultural disaster.

A funny thing happened on my way to pan Michael Bay’s midsummer mecha monster mash Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It turned out that I liked about half of it. Strangely that would not be the gargantuan 3-D final hour of demolished Chicago skyscrapers, impossible Special Forces stunts, flying glass, metal tentacles, and super-powerful interplanetary robots that could think of no better disguise than the cab of a truck. The evil Decepticons want to turn the human race into slaves, doomed to change out the 5W-30 every 3,000 miles for the rest of eternity. The Autobots with their Earthling allies fight to preserve the most essential human rights –like the right to have a girlfriend who’s 100 times out of your league.

If you can imagine that without crawling into a mental fetal position, then you can imagine “Cars 2.” In this animated sequel from Disney’s Pixar studio, Owen Wilson’s neurotic race car Lightning McQueen turns over the keys to the two-ton four-wheeled village idiot Mater, the buck-toothed tow truck. Jar Jar, it’s your big chance!

The inimitable Kevin Bowen reviews the latest Ryan Reynolds, Martin Campbell-directed vehicle "The Green Lantern."

Test pilot Hal Jordan joins an interplanetary army built on the idea that pure willpower can overcome fear, making the universe safe for corrupt politicians and the military industrial complex.

“Beautiful Boy” has a lot to recommend it. It develops real characters. It treats them with generosity, and offers a rare portrayal of an amicable divorce, in which the spouses still care but are no longer in love. Unlike Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” and reportedly unlike Lynne Ramsey’s upcoming “We Need to Talk about Kevin,” it doesn’t aestheticize school violence. Debut director Shawn Ku seems more interested in a sensitive portrait of the minutia of suffering.

Yes, you can believe what you’ve been reading – “Midnight [...]