Betsy Sharkey

Herzog has become a master of the understatement — knowing just how long the images can sustain you without a word being said. Vasyukov and his team of cameramen gave him a stunning range to work with, so the filmmaker keeps his own narration to a minimum.

Maybe there really are supernatural forces at work in this world. How else to explain Beautiful Creatures? The movie is an intriguing, intelligent enigma — three words not typically associated with teen romances.

This sloppy sentimental journey is long on beauty shots, short on depth and seriously intent on tugging your heartstrings. Indeed, it demands you reach for those tissues. Sob.

The heart of this film is on the road with Bateman and McCarthy. If not for their brilliance, Identity Thief would be running on empty.

In doing a little genre bending of romantic schmaltz and horror cheese - some fundamental zombie mythology is turned on its head - the film breathes amusing new life into both.

If you're going to saturate a film with so much violence, at least it's nice to see an action hero - or antihero - actually feeling the pain.

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.

Nothing clicks, nothing resonates, everything's broken.

The soul of the era is missing, and with it any reason to care. In Fleischer's hands, the high-stakes shootouts are as stylish as a GQ spread, but it's nearly impossible to figure out who's zoomin' who.

In "Django," Tarantino is a man unchained, creating his most articulate, intriguing, provoking, appalling, hilarious, exhilarating, scathing and downright entertaining film yet.

Bayona achieves a rare sense of balance between the big and the powerful as well as the small and the intimate in the family's survival against impossible odds, no doubt the inspiration for the title.

There will be many who won't be able to get past the language in This Is 40. There will be others who will worry that the king of callous has gone soft on them. I'm just happy to see one of this generation's most influential comic minds back on track - the laugh track.

So thrill-less, so chill-less is Jack Reacher that it is unlikely to spark interest, much less controversy.

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.

Cumming is the linchpin, and the actor does an exceptional job of moving across the vast galaxy of universal emotions about partners and parenthood. He takes us to the heart of the matter in ways that matter most.

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.

Some of the language is smart, sinister and ironic in just the right ways, particularly when Addison, Eric Bana's serial-killing mastermind, delivers it. In other cases, the dialogue is so ludicrously off - either unnecessary, or unnecessarily misogynistic if a cop is doing the talking - that it's hard to believe the same person wrote it.

Romance and capers exist in Lay the Favorite, they just aren't played well.

Quartet is very much a performance piece, which plays to Hoffman's strength - as an actor he knows when to allow this excellent ensemble breathing room and when to tighten the belt.

At some point you hope the actor (Butler) will find a movie that will give him the right material to make hearts truly beat faster. Until then, it appears we'll have to settle for films with more flaws than his characters.

The writer-director becomes so intent on hammering home the parallels between economic decay, political disappointments and petty criminals, there is nothing soft, or subtle, about it. He should trust his audience more.

There is a lot to savor in Rise of the Guardians, but sometimes too much of a good thing can be exhausting.

There are always moral crosscurrents in Lee's most provocative work, but so magical and mystical is this parable, it's as if the filmmaker has found the philosopher's stone.

In the end Anna Karenina lets you down - visually stunning, emotionally overwrought, beautifully acted, but not quite right.

The dialogue remains spotty and sappy, the effects still haven't caught up to modern-day standards, but "Twilight's" popularity is such that even when it falls short, it doesn't seem to matter.

Two things to keep in mind when considering Barrymore, starring Christopher Plummer as the great John B: It was brilliant as a one-man stage show; it was never a good candidate for film.

While his breakthrough documentary, "Dogtown and Z-Boys," cracked open the window on a largely unknown world in vibrant and visceral ways, Bones feels like an epilogue.

Perhaps Switch's greatest strength is in giving us enough information to try to come up with better questions of our own.