Kevin Crust

Above all, it's a testament to the will to live and how that spirit can be found in even the smallest of packages.

It's a grindhouse-inspired concoction that may not contain a shred of originality, but it is executed with unbridled bombast and glee.

Everything has been significantly amped up -- bigger, louder, further removed from reality -- but it also feels that much more forced. Cage and Kruger seem like they're not having much fun this time around, and Bartha still gets the best throwaway lines.

Not only screams out to be a midnight movie, but one in need of, shall we say, an herbal supplement, and we aren't talking ginkgo biloba.

Sweet but dramatically inert.

Despite striking a chord in terms of sibling politics and the inelegant ways we deal with death, Two Weeks too often feels as if it's destined for heavy rotation on the Lifetime Movie Network.

With a subversive streak as wide as the Han and a title open to interpretation, The Host confounds our expectations while providing top-notch entertainment. For Bong, the monster movie is an ample vessel, one that he can fill with social criticism while discovering exuberant amusement in the process.

Reinforcing the adage that looks aren't everything, the live-action animal drama Arctic Tale arrives in an impressive visual package and even boasts a timely message, but its undistinguished storytelling is a big letdown.

To packs the moments of contemplation with as much suspense as the action sequences and is a master of ratcheting up tension through small details.

Trade works fairly well as a thriller ticking down to Adriana's auction. It's less assured when it strains for some buddy picture chemistry between Ramos and Kline. Though both actors are fine, with Ramos' performance being reminiscent of some of Diego Luna's English-language roles, the attempts at humor to ease the tension between Jorge and Ray and some of the speechifying are out of tune with the rest of the film.

Only 22 when he began shooting the film, Greenebaum displays a prodigious understanding of the treatment of the elderly in contemporary America.

Paxton and Frost lay the schmaltz on thickly, but the deal-breaker is the overuse of special effects, which make the game in question look more like pinball than golf.

If the film offers any lesson, it is that nirvana is not easily attainable, so there really are no shortcuts.

It's more like "That Girl" on speed than anything else.

It's a bare-knuckled crime drama set in 1988 that stylistically could have been made that year and emphasizes Gray's strengths as a director while drawing attention to his limitations as a writer.

An emotional horror story, both the play and the film triggered controversy and challenged the status quo.

Unless you're a connoisseur of movies that are so bad they're good, Hide and Seek is one game you're not going to want to play.

Through sensitive, in-depth profiles of four workers, Weisberg drives home the point that hard-working men and women with full-time jobs find themselves and their families trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of poverty.

Lucky Number Slevin is an attempted cinematic sleight-of-hand that has its moments, but is finally just plain annoying, wearing its influences too broadly on its sleeve.

Breck Eisner, son of former Disney mogul Michael and something of a protégé of Steven Spielberg, for whom he directed an episode of the miniseries "Taken," guides Sahara's big action set pieces with assurance, but would have been better served by a tighter script.

While endearingly heartfelt and G-rated to boot, its storytelling suffers from a lack of locomotive force and characters that feel disappointingly two-dimensional.

Instantly forgettable.

The movie has a lot of the elements that might make it thrilling and it's visually arresting, but it's missing the emotional connection necessary to make it interesting.

The long line of recent muckraking documentaries that has preceded Why We Fight does nothing to diminish its force.

The overly familiar plot points also make the film feel a little dated.

An amazing achievement of personal filmmaking.

Wilson is as sincere as ever at being insincere, though the sweet minor notes of his trademark melancholia seem here to be in search of a more boisterous presence -- say a Vince Vaughn -- to riff with.

A shaggy dog tale in more ways than one, the campy comedy Wasabi Tuna is the kind of film that can give dumb blonds a bad name.