Rendition Torture to Sit Through

Indie fave, Oscar winner dated for about 2 years

(NEWSER) - Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal have split up after about 2 years of high-powered, high-profile coupledom. Walk the Line Oscar winner Witherspoon, 33, and Brokeback Mountain Oscar nominee Gyllenhaal, 28, met while working on Rendition in 2007, People reports. A cynic would expect to see him linked next to Natalie Portman, who co-stars with him—and the married Tobey Maguire—in the forthcoming love-triangle flick Brothers. More»

Helps redeem otherwise mediocre film

(NEWSER) - As a biopic, The Iron Lady is nothing to write home about—but critics are blown away by Meryl Streep's typically excellent performance as Margaret Thatcher:

• The film contains "little sense of the outside world, the human cost, or the ripple effect of divisive government policies. It is a movie that gives us Thatcher without Thatcherism," writes Xan Brooks in the Guardian . But Streep "is the one great weapon of this often silly and suspect picture." She offers "a masterpiece of mimicry."

Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon star in novel adaptation

(NEWSER) - Water for Elephants, based on the bestselling book, tells the story of a young man who joins the circus during the Depression, working with an elephant and falling for a married performer. Critics are mixed:

• The film “provides a constant wash of scenic pleasure,” and is true to the book, writes Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter . “But the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen is missing.”

Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan star in Duncan Jones' sci-fi film

(NEWSER) - Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a military pilot placed into another man’s life using a secret program called Source Code—where he's forced to repeat the same eight minutes perpetually in order to catch a bomber. It’s pulse-pounding but deeply human:

• It’s “the first film in a while to have a decent heart while quickening your pulse,” writes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News , calling it a "top-shelf B-movie." Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan “pull off the human moments within this intricate mousetrap—and never get lost in the puzzle.”

Forgettable film has moments to treasure

(NEWSER) - Love and Other Drugs—with Jake Gyllenhaal playing a Viagra salesman who falls for Anne Hathaway's character—has a lot to offer, but critics can’t prescribe it without a few caveats. (It has a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes , though audiences give it a solid 70% approval mark):

• The film “almost works, sustaining its blend of melodrama, low comedy and graceful wit for a good hour or so,” writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times . But it’s “treacle, evasion and maudlin convention at the end."