Betsy Sharkey

To fully appreciate the extreme lowness of Your Highness, it's best to accept that this sometimes witless and sometimes winning comedy has absolutely no socially redeeming value.

The Sparks-styled romance has almost become its own movie genre - predictable, pure of heart, sentimental and never straying from the boy-meets-girl basics, or the surface, for that matter - and in that The Lucky One delivers.

If anything, the manic energy and aggressive sarcasm of Wain's "Role Models" (2008), which also starred Rudd, has become much more refined in Wanderlust, (well, as refined as something this raw can be).

Should you find yourself in the mood for Big Musical Numbers by the score rather than a film, there's a lot to like about Burlesque.

In every move, Depp makes you believe this was a passion project for the actor, one he dedicates to Thompson.

While the action is brisk, the film never feels in a hurry. Walken and Pacino amble through their paces. Arkin ups the adrenaline any time he's around, and he is not around quite enough.

The new thriller from South Korean director Park Chan-Wook is a bizarrely perverse, beautifully rendered mystery that you may or may not care to solve.

There is enough ridiculous fun in the Tracy Morgan- Bruce Willis pairing as two of Brooklyn's "finest" to get many of you past the squirm-inducing stuff.

The bookish group at the heart of this talky film is having such a grand time trading tart exchanges their mood proves infectious. The sparring helps offset some of the contrivances that make Liberal Arts less buttoned up than it should be - so an A for effort and a C for execution.

Ironically this big, lumbering movie could have used more, not less. More Godzilla without question, and more emotional content for its very good cast too.

The animation style mirrors the original, which is simple in an appealing way. It is particularly effective in the action sequences, which make the most of animation's ability to create a playful reality. But the multi-layered historical references designed to be adroitly wry are a trickier gambit.

The problem with The Runaways is that they went with the wrong girl.

It's just that there isn't enough story - the book shouldn't be required reading for the film to make sense.

A kung fu kick of a film that hits more than it misses.

Wonderfully animated and well-voiced, Rio 2 is nevertheless too much. Too much plot, too many issues, too many characters. But not too much music.

Peirce has done a remaking rather than a reimagining.

There are moving moments as Cornish channels the slow self-enlightenment necessary for Ashley's character arc. And the actress is particularly good in the scenes with the promising young Hernandez.

A joyous, raucous, righteous film but also a frustrating and disappointing one.

The film is clever in using a child to tease out the misunderstandings that arise between those on opposite sides, even when the river of emotions that should course through The Little Traitor sometimes runs dry.

Some of the phallic jokes work, others are really lame. Fortunately there are many other funny bits that have nothing to do with body parts that keep the laughs coming.

With so many sight gags and nearly every living comic in the world making an appearance at some point, the entire operation, like Ron's ego, feels a bit bloated.

A few shades brighter than its predecessor, and the action bits certainly closer to the full-throttle "Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" mode director Guy Ritchie didn't quite capture the first time.

The banter between Brian and Arielle is easy and often amusing. But despite all the tangled sheets and entwined bodies during assignations at the St. Regis hotel, the relationship never moves beyond the look of puppy love.

The-impossible-to-upstage stars are the penguins, a combination of real Gentoos specially trained for the film and some computer-generated counterparts. The special effects gurus blend the two seamlessly, making it easy to believe there was no digital wizardry involved, which is perhaps the niftiest trick of all.

You can see the years of effort, the polish and precision that went into creating The Boxtrolls... But somehow it still doesn't add up to enough.

For all of its punishing pathos, the movie does not have the clean lines and elegance of another cut at crime in this city, "L.A. Confidential" (based on an Ellroy novel). As the day of reckoning approaches, the film spins out of control, careening between convoluted subplots, with the emotional pitch of the piece swinging too wildly.

What saves the film is that it is also packed to the gills with the classic slapstick sweetness that makes SpongeBob — in or out of water, on big screen or small — hard not to laugh at and love at least a little. Giggle, giggle.

At first Tabu is intriguing. But the enigma gets wearing as the director's attention is divided between the homage to the silent film era and the film's underlying exploration of the regret of old age.