Joe Williams

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

Post-Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller told me that Gould's music is as divisive today as it was 50 years ago, when the pianist publicly clashed with conductor Leonard Bernstein over the tempo of a performance.

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.

This thriller is both skillfully familiar and chillingly strange.

A tearjerking romance that belongs to another era, when female moviegoers wanted to be transported, not grounded in grim realities.

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.

Eccentric enough to get mistaken for an uplifting fantasy, but it's Plaza who belongs in the penthouse.

Star Trek Into Darkness offers much of what the fans expect and not much of what they don't. This character-driven vehicle is a supercharged example of cinematic craftsmanship.

Monkey Kingdom tugs our heartstrings to the top of the trees. With a lot of patience, and perhaps a little trickery, directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill have produced a simian “Cinderella.”

This affable comedy is a healthy alternative to tearjerkers.

Such a disarming homage to the cinema of the Reagan era that even grouchy gremlins might feel like it's morning in America. But be forewarned that if this movie is exposed to sunlight, you'll notice the puppet strings.

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.

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.

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

Rounded, redemptive and refreshingly free of cynicism.

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

In skewering the neuroses of New York bohemians, Durham has left us too little to care about.

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 not exactly aiming for the moon, but in a marketplace where surpassed expectations are as rare as unicorns, Despicable Me is delightful.

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.

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

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

Many of the people reading this review are doing it on a computer. And all of them are reading it in English. It’s not much of stretch to say that you could credit both of those things to a man named Alan Turing.

The plot is murky, the acting is melodramatic and the movie is way too long, but the target audience will salivate over the inventively choreographed set-pieces.

By design it’s monotonous, and with so much clunky hardware, Liman can’t generate the same pace he produced in the “Bourne” movies. Edge of Tomorrow has neither an edge nor a vision of tomorrow that matters today.

The sharp writing and tag-team antics lift 22 Jump Street to a high level.

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