Joe Williams

As long as Hollywood keeps hitting us over the head with empty spectacles like G.I. Joe: Retaliation, regular Joes will be too numb to fight back.

Notwithstanding the characters’ spiritual camaraderie, Salles’ emphasizes the hard physical labor and loneliness in Sal’s story, including the jittery rigors of the writing process. When he reaches a crossroads choice between down-and-out Dean and his own rising career, Sal senses that except for the words on a typewritten scroll, his life on the road is gone, real gone.

With a greater emphasis on sex than violence, Spring Breakers is a more enjoyable guilty pleasure than “Natural Born Killers” and just as acute about our cultural devolution. For all its seeming stupidity, its masterstroke is making us complicit in the corruption of its young stars (who include the director’s own wife).

With a child’s perspective on war, Lore deserves comparisons with “Empire of the Sun” and “Hope and Glory,” and with a feisty female protagonist it stands virtually alone.

Like a taxidermied owl, Stoker is lovely to look at, but in the end it’s hard to give a hoot.

The film is so masterfully controlled, we feel like we’ve eavesdropped on something like life.

It’s too cheesy and predictable to be a real miracle, but by Vegas standards, it’s a winner.

The more suitably antic Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp were considered for the part before Franco wandered into the picture with his stoner grin.

This true-ish story adds a romantic subplot to the prosecution of Japanese war criminals by American general Douglas MacArthur, but neither the love nor the war are completely baked.

The several allusions to Thomas Mann’s forbidden-love novel “Death in Venice” are apt, but Yossi is also a standalone film and an extraordinary sequel.

Obviously a labor love, and its very existence in a godforsaken marketplace is a minor miracle.

The verdict on Snitch is that Johnson has attempted a career detour on a street marked Do Not Enter.

Hallstrom (“Chocolat”) makes the mishmash palatable, and romance mainstay Duhamel provides some sweet-and-salty charm, but there’s not much they can do with Sparks’ canned dialogue and Hough’s undercooked acting.

The derivative script and skimpy effects don’t convey either the power or the problems of being a young witch.

To paraphrase a classic of Reagan-era cinema, A Good Day to Die Hard is a bad day to stop sniffing glue.

Some of the themes and the hallucinatory special effects are reminiscent of Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch,” and there are cheeky allusions to “Dawn of the Dead” and even “Eyes Wide Shut,” but a viewer with an open mind might say that this midnight-style movie is more enjoyable than any of them.

Suffering through this felonious farce could only inspire a prison riot.

Dare we say it? Even the acting is atrocious, with pop-eyed Pacino chewing the scenery like a geezer gumming his oatmeal.

This is a brutal and stupid movie.

Although the brazen lovers, bellicose ministers and backstabbing handmaidens are familiar elements, the film is so handsomely mounted that we happily endure the ride until the turning of the screws in the tragic last act.

While the cast includes Luis Guzman (as a buffoonish deputy) and Johnny Knoxville (as a local gun nut), there's no sense that these are real people in a real town, and Schwarzenegger's Sheriff Owens has the weakest backstory of all.

Because he's the protagonist of the movie and played by the likable Matt Damon, we keep an open mind, but Promised Land is morally ambiguous to a fault.

Perilous incidents have riveted audiences since Pauline was tied to the railroad tracks, but in the hundred-year history of cinema, few thrillers have been as emotionally compelling as The Impossible.

With a fearless director and his mighty pen freeing a talented cast to attack a vital theme, Django Unchained is damnation unleashed.

Fans of the franchise will greet Les Misérables as a feast for the senses, but the rest of us are left with crumbs.

Apatow still hasn't set the table for a meaty drama, but making us laugh is a piece of cake.

There's an alliance of interesting stories fighting for dominance here, but instead of a clear victory, Hyde Park on Hudson is the site of a muddled truce.

At nearly three hours long, "An Unexpected Journey" has moments when the caravan seems both overstuffed and out of balance, but it's such a scenic trip that only a stubborn homebody could complain.

The Holocaust must never be forgotten, but like many well-intentioned documentaries, The Flat derives more power from the implicit strength of the subject than from the explicit choices of the director.

There will never be another Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor, but Hollywood may have found a new Lee Remick in Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Hitchcock is an amusing lark, but the clumsy way it dissects the director is for the birds.

There are a few beguiling moments in Holy Motors, particularly a martial-arts sequence and an erotic dance while Mr. Oscar is dressed in a motion-capture body suit, but the road between those moments is so strewn with stalled ideas that audiences who care about character and plot are liable to take the exit to a movie that makes sense.

Like the politicians it tries to pull into the big picture, Killing Them Softly promises more than it delivers.

Penn has created a colorful tour guide, but in This Must Be the Place, there's no there there.

Even more than most versions of Anna Karenina, this chamber piece is heated by two combustible characters, not by the winds of war and peace.

When films are good, actors and directors get a lot of the credit that should go to the screenwriters. In the case of Silver Linings Playbook, which is one of the best films of the year, there is a popcorn bowl of glory to go around.

This world is divided between the makers and the takers, and after just a few minutes of Red Dawn, you'll realize there's not much more you can take.

It's not a good film, but viewed from a cockeyed angle, it's a great guilty pleasure, and director Bill Condon is in on the joke.

For his complex portrayal, Day-Lewis is likely to have roses thrown at his feet, but for the dreadful film in which he's enslaved, emancipated onlookers will reach for the grapes of wrath.

Ultimately Skyfall is rooted in tradition - and in British soil. A pastoral drive to Bond's boyhood home (in a kind of car that will delight purists) opens the gates to some psychological background, and given the true-love subtext of "Casino Royale," it's not surprising that there's an emotional payoff here.

War of the Buttons is handsomely crafted and it's touting tolerance, but as long as we open the gates to the Trojan horse of historical simplification, there's a danger that Hollywood could attack us with "The Goonies Go to the Gulag." Be vigilant!

Few mainstream movies, let alone disability dramas, are so frank about sexual mechanics, yet notwithstanding the nudity, The Sessions isn't voyeuristic or sleazy.

The Bay is better than a shallow exercise, but crabby horror fans may have preferred that Levinson took a real plunge.

We can quibble about the punitive punchline of John Gatins' script, but keeping complexity aloft for so long makes Flight a miraculous feat.

It's as if there's a missing reel of film that could tie the story together and give it the emotional impact it takes for granted.

If your inner amphibian craves a wave, you have the right kind of brain to appreciate the elemental story and scenic backdrops. But advanced mammals might smell something fishy.

Some may scoff when the boys exhibit traits and interests derived from the biological parents they never knew, but The Other Son is such a disarming feat that cynics will get left at the checkpoint.

Compared to most teen comedies these days, Fun Size is almost touchingly tame.

If you root for documentaries with heart, The Other Dream Team is a slam dunk.

Although the story is mournful, the movie is buoyed by a heaven-scented surrealism.

Formulaic serial-killer crapola.

Loud, incoherent and unfunny, Here Comes the Boom is the sound of American culture imploding.

By the time the meta-movie and cute-dog subplots collide in the desert, this high-concept vehicle has run out of gas. Movies about the filmmaking process may never get old, but self-referential hit men smell like yesterday's fish story.

Before it turns into a great escape flick, Argo is an amusing spoof of the movie biz.

While it claims to be exported from New Jersey, The Oranges is peddling an alien motto: When life hands you lemons, fuhgeddaboudit.

Too modest to become a worldwide phenomenon, but sensitive teens and their older kin who pine for the '90s may want to take it for a spin on the dance floor.

While the big-headed, spindly puppets don't evoke enough emotion to make the movie a must-see, Burton's 3-D design team pours its heart into the monochrome surroundings, from the suburban décor to Victor's laboratory to the carnival midway.

A movie with no surprises at all, a streamlined chase flick that is running on the fumes from recycled fuel.

Sticks to the syllabus of a decidedly minor movie, but its humanities faculty is first-rate.

While the cast is filled with award winners, writer-director Daniel Barnz is a dunce who can't construct an argument without employing flimsy logic and cardboard characters.

The campus comedy Pitch Perfect harmonizes high-end performance with low-brow spoofery. It's like a National Lampoon parody where the targets write the jokes.

While Looper lacks the heft of a classic, this wayback machine is worth taking for a spin.

The Master is not a schematic attack on a particular religion. It is a brilliantly conceived and powerfully realized work of art, with complex characters, exquisite images and ambiguously big ideas.

Everything about Trouble With the Curve is as streamlined and hollow as a Wiffle Ball bat.

It starts as a bittersweet parable about the cruelty of commerce, but the wonder of Searching for Sugar Man will not soon slip away.

Notwithstanding its storytelling stumbles, Sleepwalk With Me points in a positive direction for this likable comedian's career.

Arbitrage is never the nail-biting thriller that it could have been.

With a title taken from an American Indian word for "life out of balance," Godfrey Reggio's wordless documentary lured dreamers into the sacred cave of cinema, where they ingested the serial music of Philip Glass and the time-lapse imagery of cinematographer Ron Fricke.

The rapid dialogue is dry and mannered, like a David Mamet play, there's virtually no story and Cronenberg's visual scheme is cold and claustrophobic.

The fatal flaw of this screenwriting term paper is that Cooper's character is a boring jerk we're supposed to regard as a nice guy who made an honest mistake.

To its credit, Celeste and Jesse Forever wants to be more than a formulaic farce. It succeeds to the extent that the neighbors keep up with Jones.

Ultimately a movie that could have been a little jewel is unpolished.

Despite some gruesome images and the psychotic fervor of Rakes, it's a frustratingly slow boil.

Although this Swedish vehicle is thoughtfully engineered and has some vivid streaks of color, it could use a jump start to escape the vanilla ice.

Killer Joe is one of the most repugnant parodies of small-town stupidity that you will ever see, and Friedkin amplifies the shrill obscenities with blaring cartoon and kung-fu footage from his art director's fever dreams.

The delivery pouch for Premium Rush promises a white-hot thriller from the bike-messenger subculture. But what's inside the package seems like a lukewarm action-comedy from the pile of scripts that Matthew Broderick rejected after "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Hit and Run isn't a catastrophe, but it leaves loose ends and a more adventurous map by the side of the winding road.

Although it's a guilty pleasure, The Queen of Versailles is artful enough that both the prosecution and the defense could invoke it when the peasants cry "Off with their heads!"

It's not warm and fuzzy, but for kids who comprehended "Coraline" and babysitters who savored "The Corpse Bride," this stop-motion marvel from some of the same animators is like an early Halloween treat.

Kids are too smart to fall for it, and any grown-up who thinks that The Odd Life of Timothy Green is funny or heartwarming has a head made out of cabbage.

Richly photographed and featuring an attractive cast, Farewell, My Queen is a layer cake of royal pleasures, rote protocols and revolutionary politics. For skeptics who thought this story had grown stale, let them eat their words.

It bodes well for the future of the franchise that Renner and Weisz share not only a gripping predicament but something more important: chemistry.

People over 60 are as sexual and complicated as their grandchildren, and there ought to be more movies about them, but only an audience as constipated as these characters could mistake this lukewarm stream of pablum for a hard nugget of truth.

As the blindered Abe, relative-unknown Gelber earns a sympathetic pat on the head. But as the character is braying for attention, he's stuck in his stall, while genuine dark horse Donna Murphy carries the narrative load as the middle-aged co-worker who prances into Abe's daydreams.

The richly constructed first hour is so superior to any feat of sci-fi speculation since "Minority Report" that the bland aftertaste of the chase finale is quickly forgotten.

If this movie wanders into your neighborhood, the only watch that will hold your attention is the timepiece on your wrist.

Where the original play "La Ronde" was a social satire about the transmission of venereal disease, 30 Beats is a sickly stepchild.

A colorful indictment of corporate infestation, but it's missing a prescription.

The conclusion of Christopher Nolan's superhero trilogy is a hugely ambitious mix of eye candy and brain food. If it doesn't have the haunting aftertaste of the previous serving, that's only because Nolan couldn't clone Heath Ledger. But beefy substitute Tom Hardy is a hell of a villain.

Snark is not art. In the evolutionary spectrum of cinema, Natural Selection is like the duck-billed platypus, pretending to be warm-blooded but more than a little fowl.

With this unfunny fourth installment, the "Ice Age" franchise has skidded so far into kiddie land that adults who tread there risk extinction.

At the confluence of altered states and state-sanctioned violence, this drug-fueled thriller is Stone's most successfully provocative picture since "JFK."

The film is constructed from four flimsy vignettes that are artlessly overlapped.

Not just a reboot - it's a rejuvenation. From the first image of sensory awakening to the final acceptance of adult responsibility, it pulses with the warm blood of a very human hero.

Although there's a skeletal story, A Cat in Paris evokes a mood instead of a moral. Like a cat nap, it gives us a brief, refreshing dream with little to remember.

Pine and the always-watchable Banks make the best of a bad screenplay, but People Like Us gives us nothing that we can relate to.

It's guilty of some sleight-of-hand hokum, but in pulling the rug from under the norm, Magic Mike turns a trick.

Like a train, I Wish is slow to build momentum, then it carries us away in a wondrous rush.