Twilight Nation will storm theaters this weekend as The Twilight Saga: New Moon finally arrives, continuing the story of Bella, Edward, the werewolves and the drama in Forks, Washington. Regardless of how Peter Travers feels about New Moon in this week's At the Movies, Rolling Stone's film critic knows he can't stop the Twilight juggernaut from raking in the cash — the franchise is so powerful, he points out, rival studios were afraid to release movies against it.

Read our New Moon review here.

This movie "is for nine-year-old girls, and the nine-year-old girl inside of all of us," Travers says in his New Moon review. But his nine-year-old girl is critical: he says young cast didn't have enough time to adequately learn how to act between the first film and this sequel, so once again Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner pose while a movie goes on around them. At one point, Frost/Nixon actor Michael Sheen, playing a millennium-old vampire, appears onscreen and puts on an acting clinic, but other than that, this film is about one thing: Team Edward vs. Team Jacob.

Read our interview with New Moon director Chris Weitz.

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There's one can't-miss film hitting theaters this weekend, and Rolling Stone's Peter Travers can't stop gushing about Precious in this week's At the Movies. Film-festival darling Precious is a near perfect film, with only its clunky subtitle Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire among its flaws. If you can look past that, you'll find a moving film that "lifts you up in ways you don't see coming," Travers said in his three-and-a-half star review. The film is about a 353-pound, HIV-infected, illiterate 16-year-old girl named Precious who cares for her two babies (both fathered by her dad) and lives with her abusive mother.

It sounds harrowing, but Travers insists the film is hopeful, and all but guaranteed Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Mo'Nique's portrayal of the evil mother. The film also boasts two "amazing" performances by a pair of musicians: Mariah Carey completely makes up for Glitter by playing a social worker and Lenny Kravitz plays Nurse John, both of whom come to Precious' aid. Director Lee Daniels started a production company just to take risks and make movies like this, and with Precious, Travers says Daniels has hit the jackpot.

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When Sony announced plans to turn hundreds of hours of rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's This Is It concerts into a concert film, Peter Travers was concerned that the limited amount editing time would hurt the final product. However, "I'm kind of shocked at how good this movie is," Travers says in his video review of This Is It.

Read Peter Travers' review of This Is It.

Like the King of Pop himself, This Is It is flawed, spending too much time interviewing Jackson's backup singers and dancers and not enough time showing the entirety of some of the This Is It performances. However, when the film clicks, it provides an incredibly intimate look at one of the greatest performers the world has ever seen, especially in scenes like the one featuring Thriller's "Human Nature." Jackson appears frail in the footage, but once he starts dancing, you're reminded why he was the King of Pop.

For more on This Is It, read Rolling Stone's opening night report on the film. And visit our Essential Michael Jackson Coverage.

With one weekend to go until Halloween, the cinematic fare entering movie theaters this Friday is frighteningly bad, and Rolling Stone's Peter Travers tells you what to avoid like the plague this weekend At the Movies. Since we're closing in on October 31st, we'll kick it off this week with Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, the movie adaptation of the 12-part British novel. Despite the presence of the always-great John C. Reilly, this movie is "lame." A boy goes to a freak show, gets bitten by a vampire and zaniness ensues. Between True Blood and Twilight, vampires are hot right now, but this movie is pure Scum Bucket. Since the movie only used the first three books of the series for this film, Vampire's Assistant ends with a cliffhanger, but after this debacle of a film it's unlikely those sequels will ever be made.

Next is a film that was forecasted to be a major Oscar player, Amelia, starring two-time winner Hilary Swank as the aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

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There's only one film you need to catch this weekend At the Movies, and it's the cinematic adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. The film is a must-see for everyone of every age, and Rolling Stone's movie critic Peter Travers awarded it four stars in the new issue of RS.

It takes a director like Spike Jonze, who Travers calls "one of the most imaginative filmmakers out there," to create such an incredible tale out of a children's story that only had 10 sentences. All the performances are incredible, from newcomer Max Records — "Best performance by a child this century," says Travers — to the voice work from James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose. And no, the PG film is not "too scary" for younger audiences. "This is a movie for everybody, and Spike Jonze has done something special," Travers says of this visual and emotional tour de force.

Now it's time for Travers to tell us Where the Scum Bucket Films Are.

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The must-see film hitting theaters this weekend is An Education, featuring a star-making performance by young actress Carey Mulligan that Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers predicts will win this year's Best Actress Oscar. A coming-of-age tale based in 1960s London, the film stars Mulligan as a 16-year-old who falls for an older man, played by Peter Sarsgaard. Get your mind out of the Roman Polanski gutter; it's not like that at all. Instead, we're taken on an odyssey through adolescence with Mulligan's Jenny as written by High Fidelity writer and the screenwriter here, Nick Hornby. "An Education earns its place at the head of the class," Travers says.

Don't be fooled by all those funny little commercials with Vince Vaughn that you've been seeing the past few weeks; Couples Retreat is heading straight to the Scum Bucket.

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A bunch of new movies are lobbying for your box office bucks this weekend, but as Peter Travers says in At the Movies, the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man is the cream of the crop. The story of a modern day Job set in 1960s Minnesota, the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Jewish man whose spirituality is constantly challenged after a series of hilarious and stinging tests of faith. His wife leaves him, his son is a pothead, his tenure is in question, and when Stuhlbarg's Larry Gopnik seeks the advice of his local rabbis, they offer him only silence. The Coens are the angry God that punishes Gopnik, as it's their penchant to see how characters react in extreme situations. This film will alienate roughly 90 percent of the Coens' No Country For Old Men audiences, but it's a must-see for the other 10 percent.

For anyone seeking a guilty pleasure this weekend, Zombieland is the movie for you.

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It's all about the recession this weekend At the Movies, as Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers falls for Michael Moore's scathing look at Wall Street, Capitalism: A Love Story. In his documentaries, Moore has already taken on the issues of the auto industry (Roger & Me), guns (Bowling for Columbine), the Bush era (Fahrenheit 911) and health care (Sicko), but never before has Moore hit his topic more on the head. Whether he's stringing yellow police tape around Wall Street like it was a major crime scene or confronting those whose actions spiraled into the recession, Moore pulls no punches, all while making an entertaining film. Moore has always been a filmmaker of the people, so his cameras also focus on those who were hurt most by the recession: the lower classes. "You'll be laughing with tears in your eyes," Travers says of Capitalism.

From a film about the recession to a movie that it was made for about five cents, only a dozen or so cinemas around the country will be able to see another Travers-recommended film, Paranormal Activity.

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The fall movie season gets off to a flying start as Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers has not one but two films to recommend in this week's At the Movies. Leading the way is Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, with an emphasis on the exclamation point to let audiences know that this film is both funny and shocking. The based-on-a-true-story film stars an unrecognizable Matt Damon as four-eyed biochemist Mark Whitacre, a strangely fascinating man who embezzles and defrauds the firm he's working for, all while assisting the FBI in an investigation against the firm. The duplicity of Whitacre's actions is just one of the threads holding this smart and funny look at the world we live in now, Travers says.

Also out this weekend is Jennifer's Body, starring current Rolling Stone cover star Megan Fox. Sure, Hollywood is advertising this thing like it's just another cookie-cutter bloodfest, but this movie does something that's nearly impossible to pull off:

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With absolute garbage spilling into theaters this weekend — if you were expecting actual reviews for Sorority Row and Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself we apologize — Peter Travers uses this week's At the Movies to get you revved up for autumn with his Fall Movie Preview, spotlighting all the Oscar-bound films and the Scum Bucket-worthy debacles heading to a multiplex near you this season. The biggest directors and actors are all making a play for awards season gold or Christmas dollars, so let Travers help navigate you between the must-see films and the don't-see flops.

Check out all of Peter Travers' fall movie picks.

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