Joe Williams

If the world were really coming to an end, we'd spend it with Knightley and tell her tag-along friend that there's not enough food for a 50-year-old virgin.

Just misses living up to its name.

A blast, the best action movie of the summer.

Like "Gone, Baby, Gone," the French film Polisse succeeds by shifting the focus from the victims to the vigilant protectors.

Mostly the movie is about process and perspective. Through the documentary lens, Richter's enigmatic paintings speak to us.

In matters of personal taste, there is no right or wrong, so if erasing brain cells is your idea of a good time, That's My Boy could be your cup of turpentine.

The only edge in the movie is represented by Russell Brand, who actually lived the lifestyle, but he's muzzled by a bad Liverpool accent and a gay subplot that's as insincere as the swaggering anthems by fatuous hacks like Foreigner, Starship and Journey.

The best film of the year and perhaps the purest love story in cinematic history.

As a sex-education comedy, Hysteria is flaccid, forced and unfunny.

Surviving Progress reiterates arguments made in movies such as "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Inside Job," it marshals minds such as Jane Goodall and Stephen Hawking, and it utilizes artful imagery reminiscent of films such as "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Up the Yangtze."

The real stars here are Scott's behind-the-curtain crew, who fill every frame with tech-savvy details and take the sets to another dimension with immersive 3-D imagery.

Until a devastatingly effective finale, Monsieur Lazhar is an exercise in delicacy, carried by Fallag's gentle performance and a fine cast of kid actors.

It's the kind of movie that inspires word-of-mouth recommendations by speaking the international language of culture clash.

Goodbye First Love is like a postcard from a lost Eden, a painfully pure oasis where we're not allowed to linger.

It still has cool creatures and 1960s set design, and the 3-D is the best of the season, but if you try to remember the story or jokes, you'll find that you've been hit by a neuralyzer beam.

Among recent documentaries, First Position soars to the head of the class.

This thriller is both skillfully familiar and chillingly strange.

Proficient director Peter Berg ("Hancock") keeps the noise so deafening we can't think about how preposterous it all is.

Too short and undisciplined to be a world-class comedy, but its chutzpah deserves respect.

This is rich material that Moretti mines for both superficial absurdity and deep pathos.

Lacking beef or sufficient spice, it's nonetheless colorful comfort food.

May be too light for vampire purists or fans of the original show, but fresh blood is just what the doctor ordered.

Do yourself and your kids a favor. On the way to multiplex to see "The Avengers," tell them The Fairy is about an all-powerful superheroine. Someday, they'll find the words to thank you.

Damsels in Distress is shockingly tone-deaf. Stillman is still capable of a few amusing quips, but his storytelling is sophomoric.

The fiery finale is good enough to leave the legions smiling. But when a movie is expected to lift an entire industry, "good enough" shouldn't be good enough.

To keep serious cinema from going extinct, this could be sold as "The Hunger Games" cross-bred with "The Lorax," but it's better and more mature than either of those hit movies.

Elles is provocative company, but it leaves us feeling hustled.

96 Minutes is a mere introduction to Sociology 101, but it's brisk enough to rustle the reading list and keep the conversation alive.

Like a Fishbone show or an LA weather forecast, the dark curtain rises, and there's a promise of more sunshine.

An eye-opening primer in cross-species similarity. We learn that apes are violent and territorial but also that they are capable of creativity and tenderness.

Marley is thus a valuable history project but not a definitive or analytical one. For that, we await a film that's less "One Love" and more "Stir It Up."

Footnote is faintly comic, and director Joseph Cedar mines dark humor from the humiliations of identity checks and pecking orders.

Built on shaky and blood-soaked ground, but if towering technique is all you want from an action movie, then yippee-ki-yay.

Bully is a good start to a necessary conversation, but its loving voice is likely to be drowned out by haters who hide their own wounded hearts behind Internet pseudonyms and broadcast microphones.

When a place and its people are this stylish, we can't help but be drawn to them.

Unlike the benchmark sports documentary "Hoop Dreams," Undefeated doesn't have a deep penetration of poverty and race in its playbook, but it does have enough heart to make substantial forward progress.

There's some laughing gas left in the cupboard, but this series may require an infusion of new blood to last until "American Funeral."

That action is bloody, but Fiennes' choices as director are unassailably apt and artful. Coriolanus is a triumph.

In this flick, the dark side is as bright as a cruise-ship showroom, where the singing and dancing would fit nicely, while the jokes are as dull as Disney sitcom throwaways.

Considerably better looking than its predecessor, but it's spewing the same old gibberish.

While it's satisfying to see fat cats tamed by science and an enraged public, the movie misses the opportunity to sustain the pressure.

The Hunger Games is dressed as a dark satire of soulless entertainment, but like Katniss' adversaries in the PG-13 hunting scenes, it doesn't have a distinctive identity or go-for-the-throat.

He might be guilty of showboating, but De Niro's knockout performance is a declaration that the star of "Raging Bull" isn't ready to hang up his gloves.

A high-wire act that could crash if the actors were out of sync, but under this big top, the never-better Segel keeps everyone aloft.

It's hard to hate a movie that escorts us to such lovely locales, but instead of marking the territory as her own, Madonna has directed a potentially provocative story like a virgin.

As opposed to the "gentlemen's clubs" in sinful cities like Las Vegas, the Crazy Horse attracts couples.

He's not in Mark Wahlberg's league, and 21 Jump Street isn't quite as funny as "The Other Guys," but by lampooning himself here, Tatum has bought himself a grace period to grow in.

Refusing to hold our hands, director Lynne Ramsay ("Morvern Callar") pushes far beyond the boundaries of topical drama into the realm of the surreal.

The tonal shifts, the "Amelie"-style voiceover and the punk-retro soundtrack may jar some viewers who expect uninterrupted violins, but Declaration of War is alternative therapy that really works.

Like an acquaintance couple's baby pictures, Friends With Kids induces coos but isn't as cute as they think.

Thin Ice resides just slightly south of "Fargo."

Act of Valor is a competently directed action movie, but forcing the audience to wear such narrow goggles is a dereliction of duty.

Although it's slow to unfold, this courtroom drama is so timelessly humane and even-handed it feels like it came from the dockets of Solomon - by way of Sidney Lumet.

Even by the standards of light entertainment, This Means War is meaningless.

The action is contained within a coherent dramatic structure and the puzzle-box paranoia of spy-agency protocol.

Anyone old enough to have read Jules Verne or seen the way his work was successfully adapted in the past will suffer worse than the kids in the audience who just came to laugh.

With its broad strokes, this invitation to an important discussion is hard to ignore, but the blood and honey on the table is an unpalatable mix.

There's little that's new, revealing or stylish about this basic-black horror story, but if you've got a Goth sensibility, it might suit you.

Rounded, redemptive and refreshingly free of cynicism.

As in the mindless Man on a Ledge, the hero is never really in danger, we're the ones who are trapped.

Although Tomboy is as tightly constructed as a short story and as seemingly straightforward as a documentary, the parable about a small fib that grows out of control is so rooted in the rich soil of sexual identity that it entangles us.

The double deception of suppressed personality and repressed sexuality could have been the basis for a rewarding character study, but after Albert meets a kindred spirit and dares to dream of a happy ending, her denial and naivete become too much to swallow.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is supposed to promote healing, but as they say in New York: close, but no cigar.

Like psychoanalysis, A Dangerous Method takes its time as it circles an opening to unexplored depths. To reward our patience, Cronenberg gives us some honey-hued eye candy and rich dialogue, but if you're seeking instant gratification, I prescribe "Shame."

When a man whose wife was killed by cultists invites us to laugh at life's absurdities, the particulars are almost incidental.

While the PG-13 approach to the most brutally sustained war the world has ever known makes it suitable for mature children, some cynical adults may resent the tug of the reins. Me, I cried like a grandmother.

May be too cute to qualify as high art, but it's highly entertaining.

Clear-eyed, fearless and ferociously funny, Young Adult is mature filmmaking.

The world-class mechanic is Brad Bird, who applies the pacing and spatial freedom of a 'toon to a live-action thriller.

As in the first "Sherlock Holmes" movie, there are plenty of pratfalls and bare-knuckle brawls but no sleuthing for us to share.

It's a comedic dramatization with a looming shadow of the surreal.

Turturro, who previously directed a musical called "Romance and Cigarettes," lingers on the sensual movements of the performers and the character faces of the onlookers.

The sanitized setting and sappy script are so littered with cardboard characters and crass product placements that you'll mourn for the muggers and porno theaters that De Niro cursed in "Taxi Driver."

The most mesmerizing parts of the movie make up a tutorial about how the Muppets are made and moved.

The performance is both an eerie imitation and a touching revelation. Oscar voters who overlooked Williams for her camouflage roles in "Brokeback Mountain," "Wendy and Lucy" and "Blue Valentine" should now throw diamonds at her feet.

While Banderas' dark intensity overshadows the potential poignancy of the story, Almodovar is such a skilled surgeon that he extracts a juicy nugget of pleasure from a purely distasteful premise.

Like a newborn planet, Melancholia is magnetically beautiful, but it's also an unformed mass of hot air.

For cinematic sojourners, Hugo is a trip to the moon.

An Oscar-ready collaboration between a great director and a star at the peak of his powers, but at its heart is a message in a bottle reading: "Trapped in paradise. Please send help."

The troupe's first film in more than a decade, is a more aggressively absurd antidote to what it calls "a hard, cynical world." Happily, it works.

The best thing you could say about Happy Feet Two is that it doesn't have any product placements or potty jokes. Other than that, this charmless Antarctic cartoon is what it looks like when hell freezes over.

J. Edgar is the kind of prestige production that apologists will call polished, but even the technical attributes are tinny. In the gay-geezers scenes, Hammer wears terrible old-age makeup, and the entire film is bathed in sepia tones as weak as its convictions.

The Women on the 6th Floor shouldn't work, but this efficient flick whisks away our cynicism.

Perhaps the spookiest thing in this slyly scary movie is the word-for-word way that Patrick's followers regurgitate his pablum.

Back when it was planned as an African-American "Ocean's Eleven," this project might have been edgy, but the script has been whitewashed into a generic caper comedy with pretensions of timeliness.

Shannon's powerfully imploded performance ignites one of the best films of the year.

In recording the timeless traditions of Jewry, he created a new one: the identity crisis that rides on the back of laughter.

Even if they don't provide much lift, these boots were made for amusement.

Toast is lovely to look at, evoking both the gray-green milieu of Midlands life and the sensuality of good food, but it's like a whipped topping with no base.

If you haven't seen a wasting disease in real life, you might think Restless is romantic. If you have, you might diagnose it as terminally cute.

In place of a rousing adventure, Blackthorn is a haunting ode.

For anyone expecting the second coming of Clouseau, Johnny English Reborn is a karmic catastrophe.

This true story fills a needed niche, spotlighting women's basketball in the era before Title IX promoted equal treatment.

Margin Call has a spectacular cast, and the 24-hour cycle of events gives the movie the compressed dramatic effect of a fine play.

An art-history lesson and a spiritual exercise disguised as a movie.

A solid sci-fi/horror hybrid, but this iceman doesn't deliver enough to chew on.

The larger-than-life actor is as emblematic of his country as Tom Hanks is of ours, and My Afternoons With Margueritte is his "Forrest Gump." Only better.

The Big Year puts the focus on people who aren't inherently interesting - or funny.