After a weak week of new movies, At the Movies with Peter Travers is just giddy about Judd Apatow's third film Funny People, starring Adam Sandler (Apatow's former roommate when the pair were struggling stand-ups),Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann and the rest of the Apatow Universe of actors. Apatow continues his penchant for blending comedy with emotion that he established with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, telling the story of a successful comedic actor who looks to change his life after a health scare.

(Freaks, Geeks and Paul Rudd: The Stars in Judd Apatow’s Universe.)

Sandler's George Simmons—who, like Sandler, stars in some terrible comedies—recruits Rogen to write jokes for him and ultimately forms a bond with his funny apprentice, all while trying to win back the girl who got away (played by Mann, Apatow's real wife.) Jason Schwartzmann, Eric Bana and even Eminem (in a cameo) also appear in the so-called "cancer comedy." Travers says Sandler delivers his best performance yet, which is quite a feat when you factor in the underrated Punch-Drunk Love. Apatow, meanwhile, stills shows "a maturity that still allows for dick jokes," Travers adds, and thankfully the dick jokes are great.

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Courtesy of TriStar Pictures

It chills my blood to report the box-office results for the weekend. American moviegoers have chosen to throw love and money at a bunch of talking guinea pigs and hamsters (G-Force) and a Katherine Heigl romcom gone piggishly wrong (The Ugly Truth). Instead of dwelling on the invasion of the summer brain snatchers, I'd like to point to good news that happened on the weekend. At San Diego's Comic-Con geek fest, producer Peter Jackson offered fanboys a sneak peek at District 9, an alien movie that delivers all kinds of awesome. Jackson and South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp have made District 9 a monster mash that trades in—get this— ideas! Of course, District 9 also goes seriously whupass on your nervous system, as a spaceship stalls over Johannesberg for three decades and its alien inhabitants are segregated, exploited and denied inalienable rights.

I'll do a full review as District 9 nears its nationwide opening on August 14th. But know this: D-9 will sneak up on you. And I'm not just referring to the subtext of racism and xenophobia that comes from Blomkamp's roots in South Africa. The movie is as rich in character as it is in thrills. You'll be wowed by Sharlto Copley as a government agent infected with an alien virus. Copley's heart-rending tour de force deserves comparison to the miracles Jeff Goldblum performed for director David Cronenberg in The Fly. And to me, that's high praise. District 9, with a chump-change budget of $30 million, soars on the imagination of its creators. This baby has the stuff to end the movie summer on a note of dazzle and distinction. Wait for it.

For Rolling Stone's District 9 report from Comic-Con, click here plus check out photos of the hottest movies from the San Diego megafest.

With the big studios churning out Scumbucket-bound clunkers like The Ugly Truth and Orphan this weekend, Peter Travers gets his cinema fix in the form of two indies, In The Loop and The Answer Man in this week's At the Movies. First up, there's the satirical In The Loop, starring James Gandolfini, or Tony Soprano as he'll always be remembered, as a General in this Dr. Strangelove-esque film about the story behind the Iraqi War. Another comedy that deserves your attention is The Answer Man, featuring a fantastic performance by Jeff Daniels as a reclusive J.D. Salinger-like author who wrote one acclaimed book called Me and God. Both Loop and Answer Man are what we call "smart comedies," a distinction only made more apparent when considering the idiocy that fills Travers' Scumbucket this week.

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Photo: Warner Brothers Ent.

The Dark Lord himself couldn't have conjured better box-office news for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But he sure took it out on Bruno, which dropped 73 percent from its No. 1 debut last week. Those wizards are a bitch. The global debut of the sixth film in the Potter series took in nearly $400 million in its first five days, including $159.7 million in the U.S. alone. That's a record, Muggles. So to say audiences are still wild about Harry is an understatement. Last week I asked you to pick the MVP in the series, Harry excepted. Ron, Hermione and even Draco had to suck it (check out the latest episode of "Off the Cuff with Peter Travers" featuring Harry Potter's Draco Malfoy, Tom Felton). You chose Alan Rickman as Professor Severus Snape. I can't argue that one. Rickman nails a role he was born to play. Now I've got another question for you:

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Magic wand in hand, Peter Travers takes on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in this week's At the Movies. Rolling Stone's movie critic is a fan of the sixth film in the Potter series, which again stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. But it's the bad wizards that have captivated Travers: the wondrously sneering Alan Rickman as Snape, whose role is increasing in importance; and Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy, the bully with a crisis of conscience. The film is shot spectacularly, and Travers is hopeful that Potter may knock Transformers 2 out of Number One at the box office and become the summer's most successful movie.

(Click here to watch Tom Felton on the latest episode of "Off the Cuff with Peter Travers")

Also out this weekend (and worth a trip to the theater) is (500) Days of Summer, a romantic film that really works. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a greeting card writer who falls in love with his boss' assistant, Zooey Deschanel, and their break-up is traced over a period of time that comes in spurts — each scene is a random day.

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In Peter Travers' second "Off the Cuff" interview — an informal chat in his office where Hollywood stars are grilled on a variety of topics — Rolling Stone's movie critic breaks out his own magic wand (which looks like a blunt, he points out) for Tom Felton, who plays loathsome bully Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films (read Travers' review of the sixth film). Felton recalled the joys of listening to blaring '60s punk at 5 a.m. while getting his make-up done on the Potter set care of Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, and revealed how auditioning for the role of Potter and Ron Weasley led to a rainbow of humiliating hairstyles. He also clues Travers in on the trick to playing a really bad guy, and strums a little acoustic guitar. Click above to watch the full interview, and click here to check out the first "Off the Cuff," starring Justin Long:

• Justin Long: First Guest on "Off The Cuff With Peter Travers"

Harry Potter costumes provided by New York Costumes

Photo: Vespa/WireImage(Borat), Granitz/WireImage(Brüno)
Wassup? Brüno, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a gay Austrian fashionista out to conquer Hollywood, takes in $30 million over the weekend in America, kicks in another $25 million internationally, hits the box-office sweet spot as numero uno, and yet the media reports it as a disappointment. "Brüno is no Borat," said the numbers report in the New York Times, following a censorious Friday review of the film ("the joke is on you"). Huh? What? Brüno only cost a reported $42.5 million to make. It's bound to be profitable, even if it totals less than the $128 million taken in by Borat, Baron Cohen's Kazakhstan romp which opened to $26 million in 2006. Here's the deal: Though Brüno beat the debut numbers of Borat, Brüno plays in three times as many theaters. By that (faulty) logic it should have made three times as much, about $75 million. Worse yet, Brüno dropped a tall 39 percent from Friday to Saturday, while Borat enjoyed an uptick. That's a more serious concern. What does it all mean?

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Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen is back to wreak havoc in America this weekend as Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is At the Movies with Brüno. This time around, Cohen stars as a gay Austrian fashionista looking to find fame in the United States. By now, you've seen the commercials, and we don't want to ruin any of the gags, so we'll keep the plot summary at a minimum. "This guy to me is doing the type of comedy that this country needs more than ever," Travers says of the must-see film. "This is shocking, but shocking in a good way."

(Read Peter Travers' full Brüno review here.)

Like Borat, Brüno confronts many of America's most controversial subjects, except this time in addition to attacking the bigots and racists, Cohen is taking potshots at the entire culture of celebrity worship. An unsuspecting Paula Abdul is just one of the unsuspecting pawns in Cohen's comedy. While some will say Cohen is just copycatting the Borat formula, Travers compares Cohen's work to that of the great satirist Jonathan Swift. Cohen is "holding up a mirror to us," Travers says, imploring everyone who might be reading this to go and see Brüno immediately.

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With the opening next week of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (advance review: it’s a beauty —fierce, funny and haunting), my thoughts turn to the other characters in the movies (and books) besides Harry. The different posters for the movie (see below) show the mix of characters. There’s only one more of J.K. Rowling’s 7 HP books to film — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So this is a good time to pick the most valuable player in the Potter barn besides its leading man. Here are my four fave contenders for MVP. Feel free to pick yours.

(Plus, check out photos from the Harry Potter set here.)

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I don't know which news is worse: That the box-office crown for the five-day July 4th holiday weekend was won by an inferior animated film, Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, with $67.5 million in the till. Or that an inferior robot film, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, which took in $65 million from Wednesday to Sunday, is now the highest-grossing movie of the year so far, with $293 million collected in just a dozen days. Since Trans 2 isn't slowing down, Michael Bay's attempt to kill all that's human in cinema looks like the machine that will define popular film taste in the year 2009. Talk about a tacky time capsule.

I prefer to focus on better news: The continued success of UP ($265 million so far) — come on Pixar, bite Bay on the ass. The impressive performance of Kathryn Bigelow's brilliant Hurt Locker in limited release. And the way Michael Mann's Public Enemies refuses to be written off as an art film geared to the snob set. Starring a superb Johnny Depp as gangster John Dillinger, Public Enemies took in a sturdy $41 million in its first five days. That means a lot of you out there shelled out the cash and saw it. Here's a thoughtful letter I received that reflects problems I'm hearing about the movie:

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