Gabe Toro

There’s a ton of truth and ugliness to You Will Be My Son, and the minor digressions into soapy territory keep threatening to derail. It never does thanks to Arstrup, a force of nature who grabs his scenes by the throat and never lets go.

The cumulative effect is dramatically effective to the point of being soul-crushing.

Mezmerizing in fits and starts, Graceland doesn't coalesce into the "important" thriller it seeks to be.

Oconomowoc seems like a cartoon pilot that IFC doesn’t pick up, only to be turned into a film.

42 is excessively retro, neglecting the urge to pepper scenes with comic relief or oppressing, flashy conflict.

Most of Tomorrow You’re Gone moves incredibly slow for a ninety minute movie.

Down The Shore at least deserves credit for its strong performances.

You don’t need to know the resume of Maribel Verdú to know that the “Y Tu Mama Tambien” star is this film’s meal ticket. With an equal division of screentime with her co-star, Verdú’s ferocious sexuality projects that she was meant to become the fairest of them all by sheer force of will.

Tedious effort.

It’s as if Weitz knows he’s got a corpse of a film on his hands -- never trust a movie when it feels as though you can see the director clasping the defibrillator.

Gimme The Loot involves drug-dealing, constant foul language and vandalism, but Hickson and Washington, both attractive and charismatic enough to be stars, carry the film with an air of lightweight pleasure, keeping it light and bouncy.

Up until the very very end (which uncorks a CLASSIC cop cliché that seemed long dead by now), The Sweeney is straight dumb procedural, no chaser.

The experience of Leviathan is wholly singular, without context, enveloping and immersive. In some ways, it might very well be the most terrifying picture of the year.

At its worst, the film is a panoply of ersatz camera placement and terrible scene blocking, actors having no clue how to interact with their surroundings as they rifle through dialogue that stands as a series of historical checkpoints rather than a cohesive story.

Unfortunately, Would You Rather is content with being a risible borderline torture porn horror film.

It's like stocking a team with proven performers and hoping that everything else will work itself out at the end, including a rickety script, indifferent direction, and a plot that pretends its final act is anything other than a cliché-hugging inevitability.

There is a lived-in quality to Supporting Characters that comes from either a strong cast or days of rehearsal – unclear as to whether they had the latter, though they definitely have the former.

An oddity recommended for only the most fervent, undemanding comedy junkies.

For those of you who felt "Ides Of March" was entirely too cerebral and challenging, here comes the dunderheaded Knife Fight. A political satire that treads no new ground, this name-heavy comedy wastes an engaging central performance by Rob Lowe.

The film similarly boxes itself in when it feels the need to mimic the third-act occurrences of "Paranormal Activity" when it's obvious that improv had the film going in an entirely less predictable direction, clearly pointing out the fallacy of A Haunted House: you can't parody something and also try to emulate it as well.

Like another Tribeca hit given a quiet release, last year's "Puncture," Any Day Now feels the need to take its compelling true story and stack the deck in favor of what we know is the outcome, presenting all obstacles as engineered by sneering, callous villains with disdain for those who would trumpet a more progressive cause.

What Addicted To Fame lacks in nuance, it makes up for in insight and honesty.

It may very well be the best action movie of the year.

Price Check never successfully makes the shift into a higher-stakes scenario, and the chief culprit is a detour to Los Angeles. The tension between Susan and Pete suddenly lapses into a far more conventional direction.

You wonder if Hollywood is trying to make a point: sex is joyless, and best experienced by recognizable, and recognizably obnoxious people.

Makes sense as a picture focused on spectacle. The story almost seems secondary to the flights of fancy.

Holy Motors keeps kicking into a different gear, much like an eternally waking dream.

It's an audaciously broad topic, and at less than eighty minutes, you wonder what exactly Split gives us that we haven't received from countless other political documentaries.

The Thieves is less interested in the characters than it is the elaborate stunts and gimmicks.

Unfortunately, there are few screens small enough to properly convey how inessential another deadpan suburbs satire is in 2012.

It's not a surprise that he most resembles an older Charles Bronson in Taken 2, as both found the enthusiasm to soldier on in the action genre well into their old age. Bronson had a bit more patience with these films: after this, it's doubtful Neeson will.

Special notice should be given to Billy Campbell, who takes a stock character and gives him a new spin.

17 Girls is mostly fueled by grrl-power, from it's nineties-era femme-centric alt-rock, to it's marginalization of boys as sperm-deposit devices, unfair but a natural corrective to years of women onscreen as purely sexual objects.

It is a credit to Snowman's Land that it's plot twists are, for the most part, not entirely predictable, nor do they ever come across as far-fetched.

In other words, here's the same slop you've seen before, only with brand new accents. Also, more pooping.

Temple and Panabaker are quite good in their lead roles, to the point where you start to hate the fact that the movie's thesis thrives on the girls being damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

Silly, distracting, and undeniably entertaining.

Comes to you courtesy of WWE Films, though it's a considerable departure from their recent family-friendly approach. But it does make sense that the audience for post-apocalyptic films will start out with the Speak & Spell version of this premise, a knuckle-dragging time waster you could predict with your eyes closed. But hey. It's a movie.

Just as the film is about to deliver it's package, it sends the viewer an I.O.U. instead, botching two-thirds of what may be Koepp's most entertaining film as a director.

What dooms Hit and Run, which, charitably, is not as generic as it's name implies, is that the film itself comments on its own sincerity.

Made with a chip on its shoulder and a generational insight that would put most Oscar bait to shame, this completely daft film deserves to be seen by anyone who remotely supports the potential of the horror genre, to frighten, to disgust and to anger.

An outlandish fantasy that surrenders to overheated melodrama, but nonetheless titillates the eyes like a grand feast.

It's well-acted, certainly, though these performances belong in a film with sharper pacing, one that breathes easily. But, this directorial debut from Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner breathes like a frequent smoker: in fits and starts, peppered with coughs and dry heaves.

The Campaign is insidiously stupid, a laugh-free water balloon lazily tossed at the institution of politics, and one that makes "Semi-Pro" look like a lost Robert Altman film.

'Never Sorry' feels borderline unfinished, as it never draws that line between Ai Weiwei and the generation of successors to his throne that he has inspired. Perhaps it doesn't have to. Perhaps you're already one of them.

Of course, it's because of the film's casually profane tone and commitment to pushing the boundaries of taste and acceptability that makes Klown a step above "The Hangover," a lack of fear towards the lawlessness with which those films only flirt.

It shows a concern for spatial discrepancies, between characters, between action and intention, between life and death. It’s one of many reasons why The Hurt Locker is one of the most exciting movies you’ll see this year.