Jay Baruchel

NIM'S ISLAND ★★ ½ (Comcast Movie Collections: Fantasy Lands) An engaging if overcooked fantasy about a castaway-island girl (Abigail Breslin) and the agoraphobic San Francisco novelist (Jodie Foster) who comes to her rescue. Foster lets her hair down in a rare comedy role, and the island critters (heavily abetted by CGI) are cute; children will enjoy it wholeheartedly. With Gerard Butler as both Breslin's marine biologist father and the fictional adventure hero of Foster's books.

EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES★★ ½ (SHO on Comcast) A run-of-the-mill, if perfectly watchable weepie with Brendan Fraser as a father who teams up with a crusty scientist, played by Harrison Ford, to find a drug to prolong his children's lives. The focus on Fraser's puddling eyes or his face wrenching before a crying jag - on his emotional state - feels like something new for the sick-kid movie: Dads hurt, too. (PG; runs through April 10) — WESLEY MORRIS HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON★★★ (Comcast Moves: All Movies)

"The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and his new "Knocked Up" make writer-director Judd Apatow today's preeminent creator of low-concept sex comedies. The sex is unsafe, the drug use is rambunctious, and the lewd jokes are delivered with cheer. Yet what happens to his life-size characters could happen to us -- if not, perhaps, adult virginity, then at least holding out for real love. Certain family values remain magically sacrosanct. In "Knocked Up," the premise is easily digestible.

Christopher Nolan’s “Inception’’ is anything but a sleeper as the thriller opened big with $60.4 million and a No. 1 finish at the weekend box office, according to studio estimates yesterday. The Warner Bros. action tale about a team that sneaks into people’s dreams is star Leonardo DiCaprio’s biggest opening weekend, topping his previous best of $41.1 million for last winter’s “Shutter Island.’’ “Inception’’ falls far short of director Nolan’s best, though.

There’s no magic to speak of in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.’’ I mean, there’s the stuff that happens when an effects crew works to provide the impression of magic. At least once, Nicolas Cage waves his arms and Alfred Molina goes flying across a bathroom (why do so many action sequences involve urinals?), and the Merrill Lynch bull statue stampedes around Wall Street. (Hey, who said “Jumanji’’?) But a movie in which spells are cast is not the same as a movie that casts a spell.