M. E. Russell

At its best, Prisoners dwells on the ways the characters affected by the case are held mentally captive -- by conviction, compulsion, procedure, skewed beliefs, rage, and grief -- and how each character's blind spot and/or maniacal focus furthers or frustrates the search for the girls.

As horror movies go, The Conjuring is an extremely skillful, entertaining remix album. That's not an insult.

"Fast Five" and Fast & Furious 6 -- the newest, nearly-as-much-dumb-fun sequel -- play more like "The Avengers" than they don't.

Oblivion is Moebius-comic gorgeous and it sounds great, especially the loud, nervewracking honks the drones make when they're weighing whether or not to shoot you. I suppose that's a surface appeal. But it's a nice surface.

The movie unfolds in the uplifting manner you'd expect, but its real pleasures lie in its terrific '60s pop-soul soundtrack and especially in its frequently funny performances.

It's quietly brutal stuff, beautifully acted by Fanning, Englert, Christina Hendricks and a word-twisting Alessandro Nivola.

It's got a big heart and high spirits on a low budget and actors who refuse to phone it in.

No one joyfully embraces this absurdity better than Michael Sheen. The actor finds a ridiculous-yet-perfect way to deliver every single second of his performance as head of the global vampire council -- He's all over the film's finale. It's fantastic.

It's fascinating as an offbeat storytelling exercise.

The movie's perfectly understated, warts-and-all sense of time and place will send any suburban Gen Xer in the audience flashing right back to their less-cautious days, when mix tapes did heavy lifting as calling cards.

The film's climax is a bit of a jumble, but by then Hillcoat has built his world so vibrantly that it hardly matters. And the hard-charging soundtrack -- featuring Cave, Warren Ellis, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson -- is an absolute blast.

Wiseman's PG-13 remake isn't as funny, or vivid, or splatter-tastic. It contains no mutants, inflating heads, trips to Mars, or freaky little psychic dudes named "Kuato" emerging from people's stomachs. But it does a decent job setting up an unsubtle dystopia.

The movie is well-acted and a bit frustrating, but also a pleasant little surprise.

The movie is directed with real confidence by Batmanglij. He lets his actors breathe, builds suspense in one group-purge brainwashing scene, and lets the mystery unfold in an immersive way that's probably a bit more compelling than its actual scripted payoff deserves.

It's better at being droll than laugh-out-loud funny.

Waititi is still telling stories of offbeat, semi-delusional New Zealanders, and he's still sprinkling his work with cartoonish flights of fancy -- but this time he grounds the comedy in a big-hearted, bittersweet story about a boy desperate to connect with his father.

John Carter is too wickedly strange not to recommend. Movies this expensive usually play it much safer.

The sequel has all the merits and demerits of its predecessor, only with a less-snarly antagonist, a more thoughtful final showdown and broader Holmes/Watson relationship jokes.

Arthur is sort of a dull hero, but the grandfather is classic, hilarious Aardman -- a thoroughly British eccentric prone to weird nostalgic/fatalistic utterances.

To my thinking, the grand simplicity of the metaphor is a big part of In Time's oddly retro sci-fi charm. Niccol is practicing the old-school craft of making a barn-broad alternate-reality that forces you to think about the way we all consensually agree to participate in systems -- even when those systems are hopelessly screwed up.

In their best moments, Hark's action movies have a what-did-I-just-see giddiness, as if their choreography were springing straight from a cartoon id. Though I could have done without much of the film's CGI-heavy fakery, "Detective Dee" finds that giddiness more than a few times.

A terrific midnight movie of the future -- a tough, funny, fast-moving and tightly constructed John Carpenter riff in which a bickering group fights a pack of space monsters in and around a single location.

Fright Night joins "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" as proof that you actually can do this sort of thing correctly.

It's a brisk, though laugh-imbalanced, B-comedy with a hard R.

The movie is plainly entertaining, with a terrific cast and a fast-moving story helping you overlook the dialogue's frequent failure to crackle.

The movie is strongest when it stays with Bateman and Spacey, who play greatest-hits remixes of their best-loved performances.

But if it's going to be diet Pixar, at least it's action-packed diet Pixar -- with overwhelming, detail-choked production design that occasionally had my jaw lowering like a forklift.

Submarine pulls off a nice little feat: It's a reference-heavy coming-of-age indie flick that feels fresh despite being, well, a reference-heavy coming-of-age indie flick.

Fassbender plays Magneto as a supercool assassin with a completely understandable set of beefs. I spent most of the movie rooting for him, and would watch a "Magneto, 1960s Nazi Hunter" sequel in a second.

Bridesmaids follows the lead of other Apatow productions and finds much of its comedy in pain, horrifying awkwardness and the difficult work that goes into building and maintaining relationships. If you liked this in "Knocked Up," you'll probably like it here.

It's great to see The Rock re-embracing the action genre, and when his clobbering match with Diesel finally happens, it's as outlandishly room-wrecking as I'd hoped.

I suspect audiences will divide sharply on the movie's wild tone shifts. I found them sort of fearless.

The funny and powerfully weird Rango is probably the closest I've seen a big-budget, computer-animated feature get to the comic vibe of my favorite Chuck Jones cartoons -- specifically, the Bugs/Porky Western spoof "Drip-Along Daffy."

It works as designed.

Improves on the original in at least one key way: Its lead characters appear to have souls.

Director Tony Scott's runaway-train action flick Unstoppable is semi-remarkable for what it doesn't contain.

The film continues the tone that "Half-Blood Prince" set: we're leaving childish things behind, and human and magical concerns are starting to mingle in a grown-up way. When "Part 2" hits theaters eight months from now, I suspect I'll appreciate the buildup to a (literally) explosive finale. It's going to be a long wait.

Surprisingly flabby, with lazy writing and some final-act lurches into unironic rom-com that seem at odds with the bizarro premise.

Intriguing, not-terribly-probing documentary.

Gosling is excellent playing a character who's fundamentally unknowable.

Miller's global harmonizing never feels preachy -- he's too busy cramming Happy Feet with enough entertainment for three movies.

A sort of anti-date movie, a smart but deeply cynical study in failure, with our sense of loss growing in direct proportion to the characters' romantic hopes.

Travolta does a nice job, but Bolt is of course the most boring, blandly cute character in the movie.

This isn't a crime comedy, exactly. It's a slightly absurd, minimalist noir, in the ZIP code of "Blood Simple" and "Fargo."

It's hard to argue with the movie's big heart, solid craftsmanship, likable characters, decent acting, gorgeous scenery or the fact that it's going to leave its audience blubbering and smiling.

There is something, well, awesome about watching these vivid young women realize that music isn't always made on computers as they give their bands cool names like the Ready and get onstage after five days and ferociously sing earnest lyrics they wrote themselves.

In the year's least surprising news, Toy Story 3 continues Pixar's near-perfect streak.

It's a definite crowd-pleaser and a perfectly fun night at the movies.

Monster House makes its intentions clear: It wants to wrap you in a thick, warm blanket of 1980s nostalgia.

The film is a minor Christmas miracle: It succeeds on its own terms, despite the gossip hounds' best blood-sniffing efforts, and dares to be an entertainment rather than a statement.

Is it style over substance? Absolutely. But as with "Ocean's Eleven," style wins -- only just barely this time around.

A movie adapted from a novel inspired by a person who probably never existed.

It's an ambitious, passionate, grief-stricken work of film art.

The movie is gorgeous to look at, the script has a killer twist and the cast is competent.

The film suffers slightly from diminishing returns -- its first third is by far its scariest -- but it's still a bold, artful take on a popular horror idea.

Ultimately, it's a formulaic sports movie for kids that hits the expected dramatic beats.

The movie still works as a clever little "Twilight Zone" episode with great production values, and it's an impressively ambitious debut for Barthes.

Mullan makes the journey more than worthwhile, but don't go in expecting profundity.

Lymelife is more shaggy character study than rewarding narrative; its fateful final moments are self-consciously ambiguous in a way that (to me) feel almost flip, given the long dramatic build that preceded those final moments.

One of those hard-to-pin-down movies where you're not quite sure which sort of story the filmmakers wanted to tell.

A bright, sexy, globe-trotting and very French romantic comedy.

The movie has "heart" in a way that doesn't feel cloying or dishonest. And the cast -- especially Janelle Schremmer -- just nails it.

If you're an actual adult who likes old-school Westerns, this won't disappoint you.

The movie's pretty good, occasionally very good. But I also kind of hope they don't make another one.

If you can look beyond the simple-minded Socratic political discourse, The Edukators reveals itself as warm, humane and sad, a movie that genuinely wants you to think about how idealism eventually collides with human frailty, and about what upstarts and sell-outs might teach one another.

It's a gorgeous, strange little piece -- but I did find myself wishing it poked fewer aces out its sleeve after urging us to pay such close attention.

Odd, beautiful and ambitious film.

Maybe the best thing about Stranger Than Fiction is the way it extracts unexpected work from underrated actors.

If you're inclined toward women of the smart/sly variety, you'll leave with a massive crush on Hall. You might remember her as Christian Bale's long-suffering wife in "The Prestige." Here, she comes off as a sort of college-aged, raven-tressed, human rights-obsessed Emma Thompson, only cooler.

Innocence revisits imagery from the first film. But this time computer animation pumps everything up to epic proportions. The results are overwhelming.

I'm pleased to report the new Land of the Lost movie keenly understands that what was once scary is now ridiculous.

This meandering tale of a pack of ticket inspectors working the Hungarian subway system delights in misleading viewers.

Other than flubbing the dismount, Stick It is smarter and funnier than it has any right to be.

On balance, the filmmakers do a terrific job with one of the weaker stories. It's welcome news that Yates is coming back for one of the stronger ones; he's set to direct "Half-Blood Prince."

A fairly good movie about an evil subject.

Shrek 4 is at its best when it's sadistically doing these character remixes; you can feel the filmmakers' glee at getting to shrug off story continuity and make a mess.

It's an ambitious idea that monkeys with your expectations: make a whole movie about the ugly, hurt-feelings part of the relationship that's usually disposed of in a romantic-comedy musical montage. Unfortunately, like a bad boyfriend, The Break-Up has a problem with consistency.

It's one of the few genuinely funny comedies in a dismal movie summer.

But as the story takes some surprising turns, it works like a slow infection: Patient audience members may find themselves awakening to the story in much the same way the characters awaken to their own capacities for tenderness.

Wants to be a sex farce, a sports film and a serious meditation on Catholicism. To its credit, it succeeds as all three.

The cast is almost uniformly spectacular -- particularly Angela Lansbury as a wicked aunt and Raphael Coleman as the sardonic, bespectacled child who delivers hilarious, verbose asides and somehow makes it look effortless.

Also fun: tiny characters such as Jimmy's surprisingly helpful stalker (Nick Swardson); the film's final moments, which owe more than a little to "Grease"; and the skating costumes, which take their influence from such cultural touchstones as "Tron."

It manages the weird feat of making a flock of sheep bounding across a meadow seem vaguely menacing.

In "Upside" Allen's marble face acts as the pressure-cooker lid on a hilarious hissy fit.

The Boys of Baraka leaves you outraged in the way only the best documentaries can.

With his periodic porn-star mustache, shaggy hair and reckless demeanor, the movie Stander embodies a certain brand of brooding outlaw cool that feels increasingly rare.

Nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, it's deeply humane and even more deeply unsettling, in a way that most documentaries about Iraq, which tend toward the polemic, never manage.

A rough little comedy of tone. White, making his directorial debut, asks if the search for self is still heroic when the discoveries are unpleasant.

The Other Guys finds McKay back to trying something wildly ambitious with his comedy, and largely succeeding.

This is a violent, romantic, beautifully shot and performed film -- with brutal battle scenes and charisma-bomb performances by Asano as the future Khan and Honglei Sun as a rival chieftain and brother-in-arms.

The surprisingly funny Role Models does three things extremely well. It gives killer roles to comic actors frequently stuck in ensembles. It directs hilariously harsh words at children and lets the children direct even harsher words back at the adults. And it's oddly determined to give a fair shake to fans of both medieval role-playing and the band Kiss.

If you're willing to do the work, Triad Election pays you in tragedy.

Daniel Day-Lewis may be one of our great actors, but he trips over a few Method-acting speed bumps in wife Rebecca Miller's third writer-director effort.

This sci-fi thriller -- which is alternately nail-biting, gorgeous and a little silly -- spends most of its time throwing mechanical and human errors at the most important space mission ever.

Kazan has a gift for letting you see her think, even when she's perfectly still; the film's title refers to the ferocious trauma happening between Ivy's ears and her silent struggle to keep it in check.

I was annoyed by Levasseur and Aja's desertion of their tense, simple plot in favor of tedious "plot twists" that could, frankly, use a rest. It's a waste of a good first half. (Grade: A- for first hour, C- thereafter.)

The movie's biggest charm is its unpredictable, offbeat tone.

The bright spot, again, is Grant.