Lawrence Toppman

The leads blend as seamlessly as any young-old character coupling I've seen. The prosthetically altered Gordon-Levitt, unrecognizable at first, really resembles Willis.

Rodriguez' inner peace wins us over. He seems to have enjoyed recording music, fathering kids, cleaning houses, playing sold-out gigs and simply strumming a guitar in his kitchen. Searching for Sugar Man reminds us that a wise man knows lasting riches are never the result of record sales.

Anderson tells this story slowly, inexorably, with a sense of control I've never felt from him before. This is the least violent of his five dramas, the first where nobody dies. It's also the bleakest.

For much of the film, Jérémie comes off as sullen, then unsettled, then just creepy. Yet at the end, as he struggles to start over, he engages our pity.

The simple, utterly satisfying Premium Rush delivers just what the title promises.

It's freakishly funny, suddenly tender, gleefully macabre, genuinely scary, and full of a moral – fear turns weak people into bullies – which is dosed out so gently that it never tastes like medicine.

The worst thing about the picture is that the people involved all seem to realize it's generic.

I rarely pinpoint the exact moment when a promising action movie turns into a pulpy, asinine mess, but I can do that with Total Recall.

It's an approachable film that handles a serious topic deftly and offers a fresh take on a familiar subject.

Perhaps Zeitlin isn't really making an issue of class distinctions. Maybe he's just suggesting that we don't know these people very well, and our lives would be richer if we did.

Director Christopher Nolan, who wrote the script with brother Jonathan, gets so many of the big things right that I wished they had taken more time with the little ones.

Did we need another Spider-Man this quickly? Debatable. But if you wanted a new interpretation – especially one where story and action stay in the right balance – this is it.

The film has two active virtues, too. It shows human beings in all their pitiable, noble, stupid or sensitive modes of action, and it reminds us there's always time to fall in love, if only for a few days.

When Rock of Ages remembers it's supposed to be a cartoon, it's a noisy, sweaty, giddy ball of fun. When it suddenly develops a conscience or tries to process a thought deeper than "I love rock 'n' roll," it trips over its own feet.

It's clumsy revisionism. As storytelling, its simplistic characters and ludicrous situations would embarrass a ninth-grader shooting a short film on a digital phone. Not one of its alleged revelations has the power to surprise.

This visually engaging, well-acted story held me for an hour as tightly as anything I've seen this year. But as we neared the climax, I realized only a miracle could resolve the contradictions of the tale – and we didn't get one.

The film's filled with inconsequential scenes and supporting characters who add useless atmosphere or by-the-book diversity.

It's a brisk but restful breeze blowing through our heads, requiring no thought whatsoever – in fact, thoughts are an impediment to enjoying it – and touching us just a bit in unexpected ways.

So Depp summons every type of behavior Burton requires: heroism, zaniness, longing, wit, ferocity, sexuality, icy resolve. Had they stuck to one or two of these, we might have had a terrific film.

Whedon has made a superb template of an action film.

Cedar is mostly interested in the father-son dynamics, and he cast excellent actors. Lewensohn, a famous Israeli theatrical director, makes his film acting debut, while the veteran Ashkenazi ("Late Wedding") handles his low-key role with bearlike grace.

The film's main virtue, a large virtue indeed, is that it does not give anything away before its shockingly apt time.

It's hampered further by a piece of star miscasting unmatched in recent memory: Julia Roberts' archly evil queen remains as jaw-droppingly dull as her costumes are jaw-droppingly gaudy.

Critics starved for thoughtful movies will often mistake the will for the deed. A serious film about an important subject seems like an important film, even if the effort falls far short of the target. So it is with We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Every decade or so, someone proves animation can tell a serious adult story.

Where Collins' book paid careful attention to detail, Ross pays far too little. Characters never become exhausted or desperate or gaunt; they don't even get chapped lips or broken nails.

The movie has entertaining cameos, too, especially one by Holly Robinson Peete. At 23, she played Officer Judy Hoffs on the TV show. At 48, she plays … Officer Judy Hoffs, the oldest undercover cop on Jump Street. Absurd? Of course. But pretty funny, too.

Did anybody expect it to be a metaphor for modern America?

Every time it starts to feel like something we have known, we realize how unlike us these Iranian characters are.

Crash. Kick. Stab. Punch. Talk (briefly). Smash. Chase. Screech. Shoot. Mumble. That's the wearying pattern of Safe House. Had "think" been an action verb, the movie might have risen above the knee-jerk excitement of the second-tier, "Bourne"-style spy thriller. But it never does.

Most documentaries put us inside people's heads. The dazzling, experimental Pina puts us inside people's feet.

In rare cases – and The Woman in Black is one of them – a story may be more atmospheric when less is left to the imagination.

At times, the animatronic effects used to create the wolves are too obvious, and the one-by-one kill-off plotline employed in so many horror films gives The Grey a plodding predictability. At nearly two hours, it's also too long.

Most movies about people passing themselves off as the opposite sex can't sustain the illusion, but "Nobbs" does.

He (Horn) gets so deeply into the whirling mind of Oskar Schell, dominating every scene he's in – which is almost every scene, period – that he lifts the movie out of the realm of "Forrest Gump"-like emotional manipulation.

The film requires close attention, especially while it jumps back and forth in time for the first half-hour, but all the pieces lock into place tightly by the end.

Talkies may have killed silent movies, the way TV serials and soap operas wiped out radio dramas. But there are stories most effectively told in the old style, and The Artist is proof.

His (Spielberg) The Adventures of Tintin jettisons character, back story, plot, depth and emotional ties to deliver 100 minutes of beautifully shot mayhem. It's handsome, hectic, heartless and hollow, a shiny Christmas box with nothing but glitter inside.

For certain movies, the adjectives "formulaic" and "predictable" are complimentary. War Horse is one of them.

This film has two of Fincher's happiest trademarks: It's full of information and stretches over a remarkably long time (165 minutes), yet it's neither confusing nor overextended.

It's funny, in a can't-look-away-from-the-train-wreck way, and it's brutally honest. But it's not pretty.

At bottom, all Payne's films make us smile, often ruefully but hopefully.

Watching Arthur Christmas is like doing your holiday shopping on Dec. 23: fun and frantic, exciting and maddening.

So what's the motivation for the earnest, handsome, well-acted, unenlightening, workaday J. Edgar in 2011?

Anonymous is fun – if you take the anti-Shakespearean tale as events set in an unreal, alternate universe.

The Fords give us old-fashioned predators: Zombies shuffle slowly, silently, patiently forward, as implacably destructive as Time itself. Meanwhile, the Fords play off our memories from books, TV news and other movies.

Ides can't be said to enlighten any but the naive, and it's not likely to shock us into positive political action So what pleasure can we get from this movie? Quite a bit, as it happens.

The filmmakers do everything they can to balance levity and leavening. The subject says "drama," and the three supporting women deliver well-shaded, understated performances. (Howard shows us how weakness can be just as destructive as malice.)

It's tense, strangely funny in a lot of spots and – if you grew up loving old-fashioned, seat-of-the-pants baseball, as I did – the most depressing movie of the year.

Creature is refreshingly and intentionally silly, in an era when horror has devolved mostly into torture porn and high-tech, computer-generated assaults on our senses.

Nobody puts the "angst" in "gangster" like a European director. When the director's a Dane, you can count on gloomy, chilly visuals and deliberate pacing. And when the director is Nicolas Winding Refn, who made the "Pusher" series in his native country and "Bronson" in England, you can expect intense, often brutal spurts of violence.

Though the movie short-changes us emotionally, it delivers a credible, disheartening picture of greed and panic.

Madden has the wisdom to give most of the heavy emotional lifting to Mirren, who continues to shine at the age of 66.

The deliberate editing and quirky cinematography (both done by Cahill) sometimes seem at odds with each other but never get in the way of the story's honesty.

The two actors are at their best when Emma and Dexter get emotionally naked. It's mildly enjoyable to listen to the self-deprecating banter people use to conceal anxieties, but we connect to them most deeply when they bare their souls.

Writer Steve Kloves, who adapted all of J.K. Rowling's novels except "Order of the Phoenix" over the last 11 years, neither wastes a word nor leaves out any essentials.

Markowitz, Daley and Goldstein sounds like a New York firm that delivers financial advice, but they're asking you to invest only $9 of your cash and 100 minutes of your time. They have written the funniest movie I've seen this year in Horrible Bosses.

Inside this film, a poignant and personal story is struggling to get out. But it's couched in such awkward sentiments that it can't emerge.

The story might have worked as well without that stick-in-the-craw coincidence, which was inserted to maximize the horrors of Nawal's past.

The picture doesn't inspire or reward high expectations, but it raises smiles.

The sequel doesn't develop the characters, interject any warmth into its frenetic story or take us anywhere we haven't been.

The film has a huge heart, and it's in the right place.

Like all his movies except "Badlands," a taut 1973 debut, "Tree" looks gorgeous, has philosophic ambitions, meanders wherever Malick's imagination takes him and stays dramatically inert.

A hymn to that beautiful city, is among his least consequential efforts. It's attractive and easy to slip into, but he didn't put enough thought into the design, and it soon falls apart.

Super 8 takes its place among the best B-grade science fiction movies of this generation by copying the best of the past 50 years.

Most of the actors live their roles, and Fassbender (Rochester in the last "Jane Eyre") is superb as the wolflike, undisciplined assassin.

I have never seen elementary schoolers more passionate about education than the ones I met at a school in rural Kenya, not far from the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

What seemed laugh-out-loud fresh in its unpredictable rudeness (at least intermittently) is now chuckle-to-yourself funny with about the same regularity.

This installment, which is subtitled "Give Us Your Money, Sheep," really isn't a Pirates of the Caribbean movie at all.

Anton has a sad, gentle detachment that allows him to turn the other cheek literally through a series of slaps.

His (Branagh) Thor has more complex characters than the usual "Transformers"-style melee; though that may not be what the readers of Marvel comics now want, it satisfied me most of the time.

I can't recall the last film that so wholly, honestly and movingly explained what it means to be a Christian.

Hanna's a memorable creation, a girl who carries danger with her like a plague.

Sitting through Source Code is like watching a chef coax a beautiful soufflé into perfect shape for 80 minutes, then drop a bowling ball on it.

The biggest irony of this project is that it was made by a company that calls itself Original Film but has produced perhaps the least original movie of the year so far.

So despite fine acting and swift pacing and well-managed effects, it falls apart.

Fans of their grossest stuff needn't fear: The Farrellys are still the guys who put the last three letters in "crass," and their potty humor was too extreme for me once or twice.

The filmmakers try to make us sympathize with Barney by surrounding him with even more annoying types.

He (Chomet) keeps us waiting for a narrative payoff that will equal that visual splendor, and he makes us think that many small inspired touches will add up to something memorable. But when he opens his hand at last, there's nothing in it.

An honest, basic story set forth with brevity, skill, care and intelligence.

You may not realize the imprint it has left until its last season comes to a close.

Mitchell keeps the direction simple and well-behaved, usually just pointing the camera at the speaker, but you can see why this topic appealed to him.

After 30 minutes, I wondered why I was watching a drama about a quarrelsome couple who seemed so obviously wrong for each other. After 60 minutes, I knew. After 90 minutes, I cared. By the end, I was riveted.

Polished, thoughtful and touching.

Those of us who admire Charles Portis' novel have waited 40 years for a screen version that's as literal as possible – and the Coen brothers just about deliver it.

Like all his (Aronofsky) films, it's lurid, visually stimulating, thoughtful, absurd in spots, well-cast and unrelentingly intense.

A movie's in trouble when neither the hero nor the villain has charisma, and Clu is a dull dog.

Gyllenhaal and Hathaway exert considerable powers of hangdog charm and fierce independence, trying to give firm shape to the saggy script. But if you want to watch these two struggle through an up-and-down screen relationship, rent "Brokeback Mountain."

The Critic's Code of Honor forbids me from explaining in detail why the storytelling is so inept, because I'd have to spoil the silly surprises. So I'll say only this: You can interpret the climax two ways, and both will probably infuriate you.

It's grim, funny in one sequence about shapeshifters, vivid in moments of violent action, nearly devoid of plot twists and marked by long patches where Harry, Ron and Hermione camp in the woods or by the sea or near a frozen lake and ponder What It All Means.

The acting is so exact and the timing so crisp that it delivers precisely the satisfaction you'd anticipate.

The writer-director waited until he had the clout, budget and prestige to attract a top-flight cast, then turned Colored Girls into a movie with a little less darkness but plenty of heart and guts.

Damon, trapped in an inert character, shows little inner turmoil.

Pitt coasts through the movie in second gear. I have no idea what he's trying to accomplish with his tight-lipped, low-key performance; maybe he's angling to replace Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible IV."

Puts a fun, frothy spin on the 1960s TV show before sinking back into the mundane.

You can get all of this free on television any week, so why pay for it?

I spent The Kids are All Right wondering whether director Lisa Cholodenko was affectionate toward her self-absorbed characters or gently mocking them. In the end, I thought she was both and liked the film more.

Writer-director Caroline Link (who did the Oscar-nominated "Beyond Silence") adapted Stefanie Zweig's expatriate memoir gracefully, languidly and with full understanding of its heroine.