Amy Biancolli

Doesn't require anyone to love metal, or even like it. It only requires us to laugh at it - and other exemplars of bloated '80s pop, from Starship to Journey - and it does so with a campy and attitudinous spirit that's hard to resist.

Gluck also directed "Fired Up!," another teen charade with lots of quick-witted verbal raunch. Easy A does a few things better.

The film is sweet. Its observations of life in the aftermath of death ring true, especially for anyone who's traveled the contours of mourning. And although it doesn't rank among Crowe's greatest films, it's a better, tighter, more disarming piece of grief work than his baggy and zigzaggy "Elizabethtown."

This is better than any of the "Twilights." It features a functioning creative imagination and lots of honest-to-goodness acting by its star, Jennifer Lawrence.

The cutest darn thing in Hotel Transylvania is the way Count Dracula spazzes into a brilliant red devil-face when provoked. The second-cutest thing is his annoyed response to being misquoted by idiot humans.

The effect is an endearing and plainspoken clarity that stops just short of naturalism; the people in his movies don't seem real, exactly, but we end up caring about them as though they were.

Crisp, acid-tongued and sharply acted, it's the sort of exercise in tangy Celtic cynicism that's become one of the Emerald Isle's most reliable exports.

Any movie that features a character calling herself Fat Amy has a pretty firm grip on irony. It helps that Fat Amy is played by Rebel Wilson ("Bachelorette," "Bridesmaids"), my favorite eccentric Aussie practitioner of lip-curled comic timing.

A fine, fun remake of a movie that updates, transplants and reimagines the original without sacrificing its heart or goofy charm.

Vast, beautiful and meticulously detailed.

At its simplest, "Fire" tells of Mikael's efforts to exonerate Lisbeth. At its most baroque, it explores a vast web of sex trafficking and deep-rooted conspiracy that goes back decades and touches on Lisbeth's inflammatory background.

The kid is a charmer, the message is heartfelt - love your kids while you can - and, OK, the ending might jerk a few tears, even from a crank like me. OK, it did.

What makes this whole thing work is, first of all, Wilee's ride, an elegant machine that lacks any gears or brakes.

If the movie ends too abruptly, it still gives plenty of screen time to its nicely screwed-up central character. And it's still a solid, assured feature debut from the latest brothers to watch.

Ayoade is well known to British viewers for his role as a coddled nerd in the sitcom "The IT Crowd," so it's fair to expect laughs from his directorial debut feature. But much depends on your mind-set; U.S. audiences could have trouble with the movie's less-than-sunny worldview.

The film about violence and retribution is a tough piece of work, subtle in some ways, obvious in others, viscerally affecting throughout.

Some films are harder to watch than others - not because they're bad, which makes for a different sort of painful viewing, but because they touch on areas of such profound moral discomfort that the mere act of watching makes us feel complicit. We feel like gutless witnesses to a crime. And that's what makes Compliance such a hard thing to stomach.

If you widen your eyes and turn off your brain, it all adds up to cracking good fun.

The movie turns lighter and less morose as it rolls along, which is good for viewers who prefer a bit of honey to offset the bitter taste of hormones.

A triumph of simplicity, innocence and goofy jokes.

In style and structure, it mimics an old-style studio effort, a culture-clashing comedy of manners that's tinged with melodrama and filmed in a smart progression of medium shots.

There's nothing dark about Arthur: It's as bright and twinkling as a Christmas tree, decked with warmth and humor.

As for Butler's screenplay, it's less beguiling than preachy.

For all the hellfire histrionics and well-timed jump scares, there is actual, admirable intellect behind The Rite.

It all adds up to a fine, funny exercise in disheveled self-deprecation: a self-portrait of a guy who can't control a major portion of his life. Which, when you get right down to it, could describe almost any of us.

"Hornet's Nest" isn't the best of the three (that would be the first film, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), but it's the most challenging.

It's still a spirited look - well written, beautifully acted, full of uplift - at lovably cheeky heroines on the march for a little respect.

The resultant spoofery is nonpartisan, or at least vague - we never learn which of these flesh-pressing idiots is the Republican and which is the Democrat - and raucous in its send-ups of the moral, financial and sexual peccadilloes of the common political animal.