Lou Lumenick

In his own twisted way, Lou is just as much a bloodsucker as Dracula, in a horror story that this tabloid veteran can attest is not as far removed from reality as you might assume.

Laura Dern — only nine years older than Witherspoon’s fresh-faced 38 — could also net a Best Supporting Actress nod for her outstanding work as Cheryl’s spunky and nurturing mothe.

This intriguing film is the best variation on "Vertigo" since Brian DePalma's far more polished "Obsession" (1976), which ranks with the best Hitchcock knockoffs of all time.

Overlong, poorly paced and woodenly acted film.

Anyone expecting a hard-hitting biography will be disappointed by Julian Schnabel's soft-edged, dreamy and relatively nonpolitical film.

Hits one out of the park.

Hilarious sweet and sour David Mamet comedy.

It's truly inspiring to watch Fred Knittle, 81 and tethered to an oxygen tank, perform a riveting solo of Coldplay's "Fix You" after his singing partner dies shortly before the show.

By the end I was getting a bit antsy from the rambling script and direction.

Weitz keeps the schmaltz in check, but it's clear pretty much from the outset that this immigrant family is fated never to find A Better Life north of the border.

Visually, this toon is all over the place. Rapunzel's glowing hair can look alarmingly like fiber-optic cable, but some backgrounds are the computer-generated equivalents of Disney's golden-age work.

Moves in a predictable path that includes some remarkable coincidences.

The joke is on arthouse audiences who show up for Funny Games, which is basically torture porn every bit as manipulative and reprehensible as "Hostel," even if it's tricked out with intellectual pretension.

Some of the plot twists don't really stand up to close scrutiny, but the sometimes over-the-top Joy Ride plows through them with such joyful glee, you don't really care.

What follows is a hilarious, slam-bang series of chases and battles that cross "Gremlins" with "Assault on Precinct 13," the two most prominent of many genre films quoted by Attack the Block.

If you’re going to invest three hours watching a movie about a convicted stock swindler, it needs to be a whole lot more compelling than Martin Scorsese’s handsome, sporadically amusing and admittedly never boring — but also bloated, redundant, vulgar, shapeless and pointless — Wolf of Wall Street.

It’s only a matter of time before someone turns Louise Osmond’s crowd-pleasing documentary, about people in a working-class Welsh mining village invading the snobbish “sport of kings,” gets turned into “The Full Monty” on four hooves.

This year's actress to watch is Elizabeth Reaser, who delivers a tour de force as a determined German mail-order bride who comes to 1920 Minnesota in Ali Selim's captivating indie Sweet Land.

It's a bit less good than McCarthy's earlier films -- Jeffrey Tambor has a large, superfluous role that abruptly disappears, and Ryan, a fine actress, makes a less than entirely convincing spouse for Giamatti. This one is a crowd-pleaser nonetheless.

A major disappointment, The Cider House Rules pales by comparison with the gutsier, more full-bodied adaptation of Irving's "The World According to Garp."

Worth seeing for McTeer's touching, funny and richly detailed performance, which should put her on the map in Hollywood.

Leconte turns up the erotic heat in the most gorgeously photographed black-and-white film since Wim Wenders' sublime "Wings of Desire."

Dr. Godard drops and quotes more names than you’d find in a week’s worth of Page Six, but lots of luck figuring any of this out before dozing off. The good thing about Goodbye to Language is that you’ll wake up with no side effects, albeit your wallet will be $12 lighter.

Jack Black gives the performance of his career in the title role of Bernie, under the pitch-perfect direction of his "School of Rock'' director, Richard Linklater, who expertly crafts a black comedy with a deceptively sunny surface. It's the best movie I've seen all spring.

By the time two hours had dragged by, I felt a lot like I had sat through a five-hour wedding.

Perhaps this year’s timeliest film — as well as, unfortunately, one of the hardest to sit through.

Director Paul Greengrass - who directed the superb "United 93" between the second and third "Bourne" installments - knows how to stage and edit bravura action sequences, generating almost unbearable suspense while deploying a superb cast.

So gorgeously animated and so thoroughly entertaining for all ages that only an ogre would complain it's not quite as fresh as the original.

Playing a slightly autobiographical role — reinforced by a karaoke sequence that gently nods to “Duets,” the final film directed by Danner’s late real-life husband, Bruce Paltrow, and starring their daughter Gwyneth — Danner shines in scene after scene.

Drawing inspiration from anime and vintage Looney Toons, this beautifully drafted, offbeat charmer is hip, funny - and a bona fide heart tugger for the whole family.

I walked out of Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects thinking to myself, “Finally, a mainstream 2013 movie I can whole-heartedly recommend’’ — then quickly added, “well, except that it will probably piss off a sizeable portion of the target audience.’’

There are a lot of grace notes in That Evening Sun, including Barry Corbin's hilarious work as Abner's neighbor, a vivid sense of landscape and a visually arresting climax.

A gorgeous, poetic and stirring epic.

Even with his clothes on, this is Mortensen's best and richest performance, worthy of serious awards consideration. He lends a moral complexity to Eastern Promises that makes it much more than just a very accomplished action thriller.

An unforgettable portrait of a testosterone-driven era.

Thanks to Scott's charismatic Roger and Eisenberg's sweet nephew, Roger Dodger is one of the most compelling variations on "In the Company of Men."

Easily one of the year's best movies.

Mostly a well-acted, expertly directed comedy with characters and situations of truly universal appeal.

The Edgertons pile on the plot twists a bit thick, but the director steadily ratchets up the tension until a climactic shootout.

You won't find a movie that's more fun this season -- but at 2-1/2 hours, it's probably too much of a good thing.

Bryan Singer’s whip-smart and witty time-travel romp X-Men: Days of Future Past blows a breath of fresh air through the musty Marvel universe.

At best, mildly entertaining.

The most exhilarating film about indie moviemaking on a shoestring since "Ed Wood," even if its subject -- the director's dad, ultra-macho filmmaking pioneer Melvin Van Peebles -- couldn't be more different than the notoriously inept Wood.

Treads an awfully thin line between the provocative and the exploitative.

An insightful time capsule.

While This Film Is Not Yet Rated does not suggest an alternative to the ratings board, it does expose this Tinseltown sham to some well-deserved public ridicule.

No surprises here, though the stars make it surprisingly watchable.

Basically, this tale of a pregnant waitress looking for a way out of an unhappy marriage is a funny and touching riff on Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," not to mention its better-known sitcom spinoff, "Alice."

A funny, hip, touching and utterly irresistible comedy-drama.

The Lady and the Duke, which drags on for over two hours, is an experiment in shooting a period film on a shoestring that turns out to be more interesting than actually entertaining.

Has a certain dark charm if you can put up with very jittery camera work and editing.

Italian director Luca Guadagnino draws terrific performances from his four stars.

Tim Burton's best film in years.

What Amenabar offers here is an unconvincing, pretentiously artsy pastiche of just about every hoary old gothic thriller you can think of.

Seems afraid to cut loose in the manner of Robert Altman or Paul Thomas Anderson, so this labor of love suffers from an overly earnest and morose tone. Which, given the cast in Thirteen Conversations, is a real shame.

A hilariously deadpan black-and-white slacker comedy, Duck Season is sort of like "Wayne's World" directed by a Mexican Jim Jarmusch.

Nolan blurs the distinction between dreams and reality so artfully that Inception may well be a masterpiece masquerading as a summer blockbuster.

A really classic adventure yarn with one of Hollywood's great actors hitting one out of the ballpark. If you're seeing only one movie this season, this is the obvious choice.

The acting is uniformly superb, the camera work and set design are haunting, and The Orphanage delivers well-earned tears at its beautiful conclusion. Go see it already.

Somewhat leisurely paced, by American standards, especially in the beginning, but it's well worth sticking around for the payoff.

Soderbergh -- helms a much tighter and arguably cooler film -- even if the only thing audiences are likely to remember about this Ocean's Eleven is that, while they were watching it, they enjoyed it tremendously

Raja, which is basically a dark comedy about how this odd couple manipulate each other, is extremely well acted, though the direction by Jacques Doillon is on the leisurely side.

Not for the squeamish, but it is a beautifully crafted and thoughtful film that genuinely provokes.

Many indie films about adolescents these days - like Gus Van Sant's "Elephants" - are willfully amoral. Mean Creek isn't - and it's the first indie since "Thirteen" that parents should make required viewing for teens.

It's powerful stuff, and probably a more effective approach than a series of talking heads decrying bullying, which is estimated to affect 18 million American children.

Masterful, atypically political - and flawlessly acted.

Chan at his high-kicking best. Some sequences are simply amazing.

Spanning two decades in a little under two hours, Higher Ground is a well-acted if slow-moving drama that will reward adventurous audiences with fine performances and a thoughtful approach.

Bland and timid.

John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill give such wonderfully satisfying, full-blooded performances in Cyrus that it seems almost churlish to wish this creepy little Oedipal comedy were a little more well-thought-out, and handled its wilder shifts in tone with more finesse.

Director Frears, in a radical shift from "High Fidelity," again (as in "Dangerous Liaisons") shows he's a master of period detail and subtle storytelling -- and the performances couldn't be more on the money.

At its heart, this is a thrilling tribute to a modest hero who rose to an extraordinary occasion.

Genius director Christopher Nolan reaches for the stars in Interstellar — and delivers a soulful, must-see masterpiece, one of the most exhilarating film experiences so far this century.

Cannily weaving cross-cultural comedy with we-can-do-it humor in the spirit of "The Full Monty," the film builds to a rousing climax.

Though the story may be cut from the same cloth as the female-empowering "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," it's never as cute, cloying or overbearing as that movie eventually became.

The story, which also involves an asthmatic dog and a scarecrow, is more accessible than "Spirited Away" but less transporting than that Oscar-winning masterpiece.

The film plays out pretty much exactly as you would expect - which won't bother some people one iota.

A witless homage to "Shampoo" and "American Gigolo" that's brain-dead on arrival.

It's certainly a lot more charming than the last attempt at a Peter Pan sequel, Steven Spielberg's star-laden, ham-fisted "Hook."

An expertly crafted, deeply moving film.

It would be a crime in itself to reveal the surprises of Nine Queens, which provides two solid hours of corking entertainment.

A grim, challenging movie that will amply reward audiences willing to go along with its ride into the dark depths of its characters' souls.

A dumb, by-the-numbers children's movie.

In an era when documentaries are looking more and more glossy, it's almost refreshing to see the austere approach taken by veteran Frederick Wiseman.

Though it preserves the terrific lead performance of Richard Griffiths - best known to film audiences as Harry Potter's evil stepfather - The History Boys is essentially filmed theater, with minimal, and usually clumsy, attempts to take the action out of the classroom.

Remarkably apolitical, considering that it comes from the director of the Bush-bashing "The Road to Guantanamo."

If ever a movie could be charged with imperiling the morals of a minor, it's probably Sleepover, a sleazy, PG-rated sex comedy that's apparently aimed at 8- to 10-year-old girls.

This movie depicts an unlikely intersection of sports and leadership in ways that manage to be inspiring and insightful without ever becoming schmaltzy or preachy.

At heart, The Italian is a Dickensian tale that paints a vivid portrait of post-Glasnost Russia en route to a four-handkerchief ending.

A very shallow, very glossy 2½-hour travelogue starring a miscast Julia Roberts as a spoiled, self-centered divorcée who decides to get away from it all.

This is noir on steroids, cartoonishly ultra-violent and drawing inspiration from Mickey Spillane novels and E.C. comics of the '50s.

There are also food scenes that will whet your appetite. But somehow a satisfying climax never makes it out of the oven.

Comes as close to perfect as any movie I've seen lately.

A fun ride of a sci-fi thriller with terrific romantic chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan.

The animation, supervised by director Timothy Bjorkland, is deliberately crude, but it complements the wacky story line just as well as the excellent musical numbers, one of which is a spot-on homage/parody of Sondheim.

Though it's being dumped in the wastelands in February, Breach is better than many of the pack of so-called prestige movies that were released at the end of last year.

A yawn-provoking little farm melodrama.

Delightfully quirky.