Juno didn't just open at the multiplex last year. Without hype, it snuck up on us, put us all in on a discovery, and made a star of Ellen Page as the pregnant, teenaged title character. Then this "little" movie piled up a huge gross of $142 million, became a phenom, earned a slew of Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and actually a won a golden dildo for Diablo Cody's smart and smartass screenplay. A backlash had to whip up. That's one doodle that can't be undid, homeskillet. Juno's wisecrcking style has been parodied on every TV comedy show and website from here to Ruritania. So the arrival today of Juno on DVD is a good chance to take stock. Can we still feel something for the girl who stole our hearts (if she ever did?) or are we heading for a permanent breakup?

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Who out there is doing a happy dance now that Prom Night—a prim and plodding excuse for a horror film— took the No. 1 spot at the box-office with $22.7 million for the weekend? It's the best debut yet in 2008 for a scare flick, as long as you're not counting the sci-fi-ish Cloverfield (which had $41 million at hello). Other fright flicks that opened this year include—please stop me at any time if you hear the title of a decent one— One Missed Call, The Eye, Shutter, Funny Games, and The Ruins, which tumbled nearly sixty percent in its second week. If these duds strike you as sweet news for scares, gag me now. Another box-office wake-up call is the distant second place finish at $12 million for Street Kings, with Keanu Reeves futilely trying to channel Russell Crowe as a bad cop approaching meltdown. Want more?

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In this week's video review, Peter Travers goes over an odd weekend at the cinema. If you want star power, there's the action-packed Street Kings (starring Keanu Reeves) and the talky, quirky Smart People (with Ellen Page and Sarah Jessica Parker). But the real winner might just be The Visitor, an indie with a lot of intelligence and a great performance from character actor Richard Jenkins. Click above for the complete scoop from the Rolling Stone film critic.

• Review: Street Kings

• Review: The Visitor

Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]

Matt Cooley, the wizard who designs my movie pages at Rolling Stone, came in yesterday with a pained look on his face.

“My girlfriend wants to see The Counterfeiters,” he said.

Matt was in agony. I see his torment often on the faces of those boyfriends and husbands who are suddenly put on the spot by their significant she. Women mysteriously seem to know about foreign films and American indies that guys have never heard of. I told Matt that The Counterfeiters, a fact-based German-Austrian film about forgery in a Nazi concentration camp, was a solid choice and showed his girlfriend had quality taste. She might even class up his act. Matt is not a complete philistine. Despite his disturbing jones for the screen acting of comic Dane Cook—including the unwatchable Waiting— Matt saw and liked The Bank Job and seemed ready to commit to something more than endless hours glued to DVDs of Family Guy.

Matt is not alone out there. Guys unbitten by indie cinemania clearly need to know what to say when the girlfriend suggests an art-house movie. A flat “No” will get you nowhere and definitely won’t get you any. So here are some rules to live by when she suggests a break from mainstream escapism. Feel free to add your own, especially if you learned the hard way.

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Is it bananas to cast Josh Brolin, the dog-shooting hombre of No Country for Old Men and American Gangster, as George W. Bush in W, the new film from Nixon biopic director Oliver Stone? No more than the movie itself, which New York magazine has just predicted will be “the comedy hit of 2009.” For my money, Brolin is one of the most underrated actors in America, and can play anything. But if an early version of the script obtained by ABCNews.com is on the money, Stone will be having a lot more fun with Dubya then he did with Tricky Dick. Listen to just three descriptions from a script that shows Bush as a party animal who resents living in his father’s shadow until he gives up booze, finds religion and gets up to political shenanigans:

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Paul Thomas Anderson's roaring masterwork There Will Be Blood is the only DVD worth your bucks this week. Wanna fight me? Go ahead. I'll drink your milkshake—I'll drink it up if you think you got your money's worth shelling out for Reservation Road, Lions for Lambs or The 11th Hour (Leonardo DiCaprio's preachy and futile shot at echoing Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth). Blood, which gives you the Oscar-winning and career-defining performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as California oilman Daniel Plainview, is the one that belongs in the collection of anyone who cares about the past, present and future of American movies. If you're pinching pennies,

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If you're very young or just forgetful, Charlton Heston—who died yesterday at 84— is probably just the actor dude you can't escape every Easter and Passover when The Ten Commandments pops up on the tube and shows Heston's Moses parting the Red Sea. Or maybe you remember him getting ambushed at home by Michael Moore in the 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine. Moore was right to confront Heston in his role as the president of the National Rifle Association. Just a year after the massacre at Columbine, Heston lept onstage at an NRA convention, raised an antique rifle above his head and told then presidential candidate Al Gore that he would have pull the gun "from my cold, dead hands." Heston had a flair for dramatic gestures, not the least of which was his switch from liberal politics in the 1960s to right-wing conservatism thereafter. Moore took heavy shit for sandbagging an old man suffering from Alzheimer's. Maybe Moore deserved it, but Heston made himself a target. His fearlessness marked his best performances. And since this is a movie blog, let's drop the politics and talk about Heston the actor, who was better than his carved-out-of-granite reputation. You have your faves, here are mine:

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In this week's video review, Peter Travers takes a look at the Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light, the kid-friendly Nim's Island, the Wong Kar-wai directed My Blueberry Nights (starring Norah Jones) and the George Clooney screwball comedy Leatherheads. Click above for all of the Rolling Stone film critic's thoughts on a busy weekend at the cinema. Plus: Read Travers' reviews of Leatherheads and Shine a Light.

Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]

Talk about a great rock concert movie. Martin Scorsese's Shine a Light puts such a laser focus on the Rolling Stones live that it might as well be an MRI. I'd rank Shine a Light ahead of Cocksucker Blues and Let's Spend the Night Together and just under Gimme Shelter and Godard's One Plus One: Sympathy for the Devil among the great Stones films. Shine a Light gives us all another excuse—not that we need one—to rank the great rock concerts captured on screen. I'm not talking rock feature films,

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Watch every episode of our weekly Peter Travers video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Friday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]