Joe Neumaier

There’s a great fever-dream quality to David O. Russell’s American Hustle that instantly reels you in.

Marie is middle-aged and at a crossroads in All the Light in the Sky, a movie that feels the same way — listless and searching and on its way toward something good.

Yes, the film’s CG dinos look great tromping in the Alaskan wilderness, but children deserve better than such unchallenging fare.

Like the bloated channels it parodies, the movie stretches to find something to say, then settles for stupid.

Comedy characters change and grow. Sometimes, as we see in Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas, they become so much like old relatives that their edge is gone.

As an acting symposium, this is 83 minutes of Tucci exercises; never a bad thing. The wooden Eve does her best, but director/writer Neil LaBute unfortunately underwrote her character — by design, it would seem, given all that transpires.

The slick but moving Saving Mr. Banks transcends its corporate pedigree to become a great Disney movie about making a Disney movie.

Murder on the Orient Express, this ain’t.

The result is cool and semi-comical, but also serious.

Throughout, Hollyman rings true . She’s heartfelt, freaked-out and never too way out.

Like “The Deer Hunter” — from which it swipes its Keystone State milieu, its haunted veterans, and its self-endangerment metaphor — Out of the Furnace gets under your skin.

Leave it to Spike Lee to deliver one of the strangest, most off-putting movies for the Thanksgiving holiday.

A disappointing mess of a genre flick.

This odd Dickens-meets-Sunday-school movie is as artless as the setup is muddled.

The dissection and discussion, though well-intentioned, winds up lifeless.

Filmed — patiently, beautifully — over that same length of time, the film’s day-to-day aches are quiet and lovingly rendered.

Writer-director Will Slocombe presents a familiar buffet, but there’s good stuff to pick over.

The good news is it comes very close, and does it without sacrificing its soul. Despite its sense of been-here-slayed-that, director Francis Lawrence expertly delivers thrills, ideas and spectacle.

Empathy for the all-too-real plight of the working poor drives this heavy but bold indie. Sadly, though, it falters under the weight of too much drama.

Capturing family on film — the real rhythms of family, with all the annoyances, awkwardness and affection — is tough. Tougher still is wrestling a story around the murky emotional waters of Midwestern relatives. Yet one needn’t be cut from that cloth to see the hilarious beauty, and the beautiful honesty, in Nebraska.

A frosty-eyed, imperturbable actress in “Atonement,” “Hanna” and “The Host,” Ronan is at least able to sell Daisy’s new focus while the movie loses its own.

The movie’s spell is solid, even if it doesn’t soar to the heights it could.

Director Mike Newell’s rich take on the story is a fine introduction for new viewers.

Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart’s doc, exec-produced by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, is one more sad, serious eulogy for a way of life.

Thor: The Dark World may not be thunder from the movie gods, but it is — shock! — an entertaining journey into mystery, action and fun.

If Woodroof is the movie’s guts, Rayon is its heart, and Leto (TV’s “My So-Called Life,” “Alexander”) is stunningly perfect, even when the story veers ever so slightly into expected territory.

Though coming off at times like Adam Sandler’s “Grown-ups,” only with Oscar winners, Last Vegas is a genial little comedy for the crowd it’s intended for.

The fights are strong (though the 49-year-old director’s are slo-mo), and the surface is calm. Say “Whoa!” if you like, but it’s cool.