Claudia Puig

The best thing about A Good Day to Die Hard is its title.

This genre stew throws in so many ingredients - including sundry body parts that are cut off and go flying, and heads that explode - that the result is a tasteless mash-up that's hard to stomach.

Quartet is endearing, sometimes even irresistible.

It tries to be a moody thriller, but cliched dialogue and too many coincidences make for a predictable and hackneyed film.

In the last five minutes the film shifts gears and offers a tribute to law enforcement. But this tacked-on resolution is as sticky and fake as Sean Penn's make-up job.

The highlight of Not Fade Away, a meandering and bittersweet coming-of-age story, is its killer '60s pop-rock soundtrack.

Promised Land is an involving and timely tale that explores the changing nature and complex challenges of rural life.

This is a tale not only of epic disaster but also of resilience. The Impossible is a nimbly acted drama that is at once a stellar visual achievement and a life-affirming story of familial love and courage.

Les Misérables is sweeping, as would be expected given the scope of the hugely popular stage musical from which it is adapted. But it's also wonderfully intimate, thanks to Tom Hooper's deft direction.

Despite a terrific cast, Jack Reacher comes up empty-handed.

There's an epic spaghetti Western feel to Quentin Tarantino's latest action/comedy/romance hybrid that is by turns dazzling, daring, gruesome and astonishingly funny.

Give it plenty of points for brutal honesty. But This is 40 could have used more laughs.

While this decade-long look at the inner workings of the CIA is intriguing, the movie would have benefited by more character development and additional editing.

Audiences deserve a resounding "mea culpa" for the embarrassing dreck, masquerading as comedy, in The Guilt Trip.

While the production design is impeccable and the journey intermittently involving, The Hobbit is overlong and lacks the enchantment of the Lord of the Rings films.

The shenanigans of randy soccer moms and their obnoxious blowhard husbands are intended as comic relief. But the sappy plot of this formulaic romantic comedy is just as silly as its inane attempts at farce.

The setting is vivid but the film is lifeless, despite many innuendos dropped about FDR's alleged infidelity.

This gritty examination of physical and psychological wounds offers a superb performance by Marion Cotillard, who speaks volumes with her eyes, and a less convincing one by her lead co-star.

Takes a fascinating chapter in Danish history, little-known to general audiences, and presents it engagingly.

There's nothing touchy-feely about Killing Them Softly, a stylish thriller worth seeing -- despite its relentless violence -- for its sharp dialogue, mesmerizing photography and gritty performances.

Though the film is titled Hitchcock and ostensibly centers on the legendary director, we get a better sense of the women around him than the enigmatic filmmaker.

A spectacular high-seas epic that employs technology brilliantly and underscores the power of a vividly told story.

Only those with paranoid fantasies of an en masse invasion on American soil will find Red Dawn remotely powerful. The concept should have been updated to allow for more complex and surreptitious kinds of warfare.

With its fanciful razzle-dazzle, Rise of the Guardians is appealing, if slightly hectic, family fare.

Though energetic, daring and gorgeous to behold, this re-imagining of Tolstoy's classic tale lacks a viable sense of passion, holding the characters at arm's length and glossing over social issues.

There may never have been a movie whose quality mattered less than this final chapter of The Twilight Saga.

Silver Linings is consistently entertaining, with its scrappy, well-drawn characters, offbeat humor and indefatigable positive outlook.

Through this very specific look at a critical time in Lincoln's presidency, Kushner, Spielberg and Day-Lewis work together to present an honest look at America's most revered statesman. Kushner finds an artful way to weave in the texts of the Gettysburg Address and the 13th Amendment, as well as a creative way to present Lincoln's assassination.