Betsy Sharkey

The sheer audacity of Fast Five is kind of breathtaking in a metal-twisting, death-defying, mission-implausible, B-movie-on-steroids kind of way. Not complaining, just saying.

Spurlock creates a good time along with some surprisingly salient observations as he tries to keep his balance on this very slippery slope.

The past is where all the intrigue of the movie lies, and that is where the film is at its most compelling, with the present sometimes wilting in the desert heat.

A lyrical poem for some, like watching paint dry for others. I'd argue for embracing the poetic, a rare commodity in American films these days.

What we have here is truly a rare bird, and I'm not talking about the world's last two blue macaws...No, the nearly extinct species of which I speak is the G-rated family movie - nice for a change to sit through a film with literally no cringe or fear factor.

The kills themselves are both bountiful and bloody, the movie references are brilliant and bloody, the funny is very frequent and very frequently bloody, but to say any more would ruin the boo.

Meanwhile, Mirren, that grande dame of cinema, just seems tired. And who could blame her? She's in the midst of this disaster, literally and figuratively dying right in front of us. Made me want to cry, just not for Arthur.

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.

A wonderfully wild provocation - an imperfect, overlong, intemperate and utterly absorbing romp through the id that I wouldn't have missed for the world.

The intricate plotting that distinguished the book overwhelms the movie.

After the sharp bite and harsh light of most American-style guy-based funny films today, Paul comes as such sweet relief.

Smart isn't all it's cracked up to be and soon the movie is unraveling faster than all of Eddie's grand schemes.

Instead of breathing life into cartoonist Berkeley Breathed's cheeky kids morality tale, the movie - with all its 3-D motion capture animation flash - flatlines.

Gorgeously shot, smartly conceived, cleverly cast, badly executed - the lush medieval beauty here is at best only skin deep.

The city's skyline is blown to bits. Burning, broken, blackened bits. So if that's what you're in the mood for, that is what the film delivers, endlessly, but in that cheesy-campy way that can make a bad movie good fun.

There are risky plot choices all along the way, but the risks are what keeps the pot boiling as the complexities of the relationship triangle heat up and cool down.

Verbinski's greatest triumph is that he allowed the animation to free rather that confine him. There is indeed a new sheriff in town, with Rango destined to become a classic.

Overall Take Me Home Tonight represents a lateral move at best for its 24-hour party people, a step back at worst, and not worth your time either way.

Anderson spends most of his energy creating a mood - making "Vanishing" more cerebral than white-knuckle, though a few more shrieks (mine) might have been nice.

After scoring big in 1998 with "Mary" - the zipper issue, the "hair gel" mix-up, the roving troubadours - their (Farrelly brothers) raw inventive edge has never been quite as sharp. Hall Pass, starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis, continues that creative slide into everyday crude.

The appealing new kid-on-the-teen-angst block, reverberates with much of the same dark combustible mix of action and romance that's been fueling the "Twilight" vampire mega-franchise for a while now.

Like an exquisite minimalist painting - its beauty will move you, its simplicity will fool you. For there are layers and complexities to be found in the film, like the many mysteries it slowly exposes.

If that all sounds like a lot of good, clean fun, a word of warning. In what seems to have become the genre's raison d'etre, the dialogue is so blue at times that you'll probably feel the heat of the blushing cheeks on either side of you, especially whenever Reilly's fast-talking savant of smut shows up.

If you're a Sandler film buff, the comedy is classic Sandler and will probably satisfy. Still, the best thing about the movie remains Aniston - she is reason enough to just go with it.

It is a singular performance and a deeply affecting if imperfect film.

Sadly, an obsession with raunchy one-liners trips everything up, turning a clever conceit into something closer to a sleazy, cheesy affair.

What makes this intriguing, yet woefully uneven film so relatable is that there is nothing about Ned's experience that seems extreme.

Whatever the film's flaws, and like its protagonist, there are times when things get a bit out of control, watching Giamatti use Barney to wrestle with success, failure, friendship, love and increasingly with time is exhilarating.

What The Dilemma ultimately does best is create a platform for Vaughn to drag that iconic character of his into full-blown adulthood.

Sometimes it seems as if Iñárritu is literally carving out his actor's heart, so tangible does Bardem make Uxbal's fears. Iñárritu has so much that he wants to say - too much, in fact, and the film's central weakness - that he has created an emotional tsunami for both the actors and the audience.

That meandering dialogue can be difficult to control, and at times the film feels as if the director has stepped away from the vehicle, leaving it to veer off the path. Still, it's an experiment that works more than it fails by giving Gosling and Williams both the motive and the means to create something extraordinary, a valentine that actually says something true about being in love.

Oone of those movies that falls between complete disaster and loads of fun. Mild amusement is probably about right.

Country Strong is Feste's second film, and she infuses it with an earnestness that swings between too too much and appealing, the same earnestness that swamped her filmmaker debut last year with "The Greatest."

It is incredibly tempting to resort to the implied off-color word play made possible by the Focker name and suggest that this third edition is totally - but I won't.

Though the film is peppered with one-liners tailor-made for Spacey to sling with stinging effect, it doesn't so much leave you laughing as just weary, and wishing this weren't a true story at all.

New players, a new story line, a new director and nearly three decades of improved technology including all the whiz-bang-wow the latest 3-D has to offer. Unfortunately, there's not nearly enough new life.

More impressive than the multi-dimensions is Megamind's minimalist, modernist look. It creates a crispness that feels more contemporary than retro, which not only is very aesthetically pleasing but makes it easier to savor the film's many sight gags.

This is a disappointing turn coming from Phillips, particularly since "The Hangover" was such a fresh, bracing brew of black comic fun.

By bringing in a diverse group of big thinkers to take part in a very animated, sometimes agitated, discussion, the filmmaker has succeeded in bringing what could have been a very dry mountain of data, theories and experimental research to vibrant life.

A love story that is actually worth falling for, with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal excellent at steaming up the screen in Love & Other Drugs.

In the face of The Tempest, the stormy tragicomedy of rage, romance and redemption that is among Shakespeare's last and greatest works, Julie Taymor, a filmmaking savant of extraordinary vision and voice, suddenly and surprisingly folds.

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.

You might want to tuck Damien Chazelle's name into your memory bank if his filmmaking debut, the terrific jazz improvisation that is Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, is any indication of what his future might hold.

Oh, there are sword fights aplenty (as bloodless as ever), but instead of a real story, we are left clinging to individual moments.

The good thing about All Good Things - that would be Kirsten Dunst, for if there is one thing this strange and creepy film does well it is remind us of just what a talented actress she is.

What the film does well is capture the confusion of the identity abyss of twentysomethings of a certain social class.

As for the many loose ends the director leaves, you can either tie them or leave them loose, either way is fine since the experience as much as anything is what Antoniak was after.

It's clear from first frame to last that the filmmakers decided to go broad, very broad, with a story that swings between hysterical, hyper-sexual, bizarre, surprisingly tender and just plain awful. This is one mixed bag of a movie.

Hawkins' performance as "Dagenham's" unassuming heroine, an amalgam of several key figures who stepped up back in the day, is first-rate and already generating some Oscar talk.

About 33 minutes in, I couldn't help but think, if they do another close-up of your watch as it tick, tick, ticks toward another three, I will scream. But honestly, any screaming should be directed at Paul Haggis, who both wrote and directed this mess.

The filmmaker is at his best unspooling the politics of independence, which he does with such confident fervor that you always understand the fight.

In the end, 127 Hours is one man's incredible, unforgettable journey; it took the extraordinary alchemy of Boyle and Franco to also make it ours.

Whatever stumbles there may be, they are offset by moments when For Colored Girls soars.

Nighy is usually a treat to watch navigating life's bad turns, so it's especially frustrating that the filmmaker so often leaves him at loose ends.

Fortunately Stewart seems to thrive in water over her head, and when she pulls Gandolfini in with her the movie gels. It makes you wish the filmmaker had left them in the deep end longer.

Rapace moves through the escalating exposure with a series of subtle shifts that are both painful and exquisite to watch. The actress can make eye contact seem like salt in an open wound.

The film falls short of delivering the outrage and uplift that should have come easy for this true-life fight against justice denied. Unfortunately, that makes Conviction more a trial than a triumph.

Self-discovery always comes with a cost, and in Bliss the price is a great one. It is mesmerizing to watch it unfold in the lives of these two young people.

The narrative arc swings between light and darkness, from the sheer joy of the Persian rappers who practice on top of an unfinished skyscraper, to Nadar's arrest and interrogation for his black-market DVDs. In Ghobadi's hands, though, it always feels real.

The satire is sagging, the irony's atrophied and the funny is flabby.

There are so many wonderfully unconventional things to like about this tiny independent film, Monaghan's earthy and uncompromising performance chief among them, its depth surprising you at every turn.

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.

Here the filmmakers are in fine fettle, which goes a long way to make much of the low-brow silliness and slapstick infectious.