!! 1/2 "Iron Man"

As you might expect, "Iron Man" is an elemental affair. The ear for dialogue is tin. The directing contains lead. The gases released are mostly sulfuric. And it all mixes to form that complex compound whose formula we know by heart: the superhero blockbuster. However, the I-know-it-by-heart part makes it somewhat resistible. It's entertainment out of a jar. Even though the movie makes an admirable bid for political topicality by retrofitting the struggles of its Marvel Comics hero for our current wars, and even though the fantastic Robert Downey Jr. plays our slutty, metallic superhero, there's a sameness to it that makes the entire enterprise seem obligatory. Close your eyes, and it's "Superman Begins: Rise of the Silver Daredevil 3." Even the hard rock of the film's score sounds like heavy Muzak. (PG-13)

Remember Patrick Dempsey the Early Years? The little pisher who starred in late-'80s comedies like "Loverboy" and "The Woo Woo Kid"? Back then, Dempsey was a jug-eared Jon Cryer-wannabe, likable and sharp but no one's idea of a dreamboat. Now, of course, he's McDreamy — Dr. Derek Shepherd on the hit show "Grey's Anatomy" — and somewhere Jon Cryer is seething with envy. To shore up his new sex appeal, Dempsey's back in movies playing soulful Manhattan metrosexuals. Last year's "Enchanted" was a charmer. This year's "Made of Honor" is a retread — "My Best Friend's Wedding" with the genders reversed and the brains removed. Chick flicks this calculated should come with enough Scorpion Bowls to numb the pain. (PG-13)

!!! "Baby Mama"

"Baby Mama" is an unexpected triumph. It's a romantic screwball comedy about a yuppie and the woman she pays to carry her baby. The movie was written and directed by a man, Michael McCullers. But it cuts out the obligatory middleman and lets two women make us laugh, often very hard. Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) is 37 and occupationally accomplished (she works as a vice president at a comical Whole Foods-ish supermarket chain in Philadelphia). But she's single, childless, and having a terrible time conceiving. She could keep injecting herself with hormones. She could adopt. Instead, she pays an agency $100,000 to find a surrogate. The search turns up Angie Ostrowski (Amy Poehler), a petite and stupendously blond slacker with bad eating habits and a dolt named Carl (Dax Shepard) for a boyfriend. (PG-13)

!!! "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"

The movies that come out of the Judd Apatow comedy factory are the real revenge of the nerds. In them the human male at his most woebegone manages to score with women who in the real world wouldn't touch him with a pair of tweezers. The heroes are pudges, mouthbreathers, loners, stoners — the average guy on a less-than-average day. It's a hell of a fantasy, and audiences of both genders seem to love it. "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is the latest factory product, and like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," and "Superbad" before it, it delivers belly laughs that explode from the meeting of wit and shock. You've probably already heard about the bit early on when the main character gets dumped by his girlfriend right after he's come out of the shower, dropping his towel in dismay. The scene's rudely hilarious but painful, too; if you've ever been thrown over, that's exactly how exposed you feel. It's full frontal male masochism. (R)

!! 1/2 "The Forbidden Kingdom"

With a combined 133 movies and 72 years in the business between them, Hong Kong action superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li have put off appearing in a film together for far too long. Even the idea of them sharing the screen gets your neck hairs pricking. Li's mercurial grace and Chan's comic daredevilry, the ways in which each man defies gravity in his own carefree fashion — it's like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly having a smackdown. What could be a breakthrough collaboration, though, ends up tasting like warmed-over fusion cuisine. "The Forbidden Kingdom" is a mild disappointment even as it clears a space for Chan and Li to bounce merrily off the edges of the screen. (PG-13)

!!! 1/2 "Body of War"

The body in Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue's documentary, "Body of War," belongs to Tomas Young, a 25-year-old soldier who was shot in Sadr City after only five days in Iraq. The body also refers to the congressmen and women who voted, in 2002, to grant the president the unilateral authority to send him there. By making the war's supporters inextricable from those who suffer because of it, Spiro and Donahue (yes, that Phil Donahue) challenge the consequences of the war. The movie cuts between the filmmakers' time with Young, who took a bullet near the spine that left him paralyzed from the legs down, and C-SPAN footage of senators and representatives arguing for and against passing the war resolution. In 2005, Young returns to Kansas City, Mo., and marries his fiancie, Brie. But the movie intrudes with montages of the speechifying that went on in the Capitol three years earlier. (NR)

!! 1/2 "Street Kings"

In "Street Kings," a hard-boiled Keanu Reeves spends a few intense days trying to find the men who framed him for his ex-police partner's murder. In every sense, the movie is like a Rockstar Games title: The Los Angeles it has reconstructed is endless and complex, but the action is mindless — shoot, kill, win. Reeves, meanwhile, has the kind of semi-alive, pixilated face that turns up in Grand Theft Auto or Midnight Club. (R)