Marc Savlov

The chickiest flick you're likely to see this season. Depending on your taste in romantic fare, you'll either find it toe-curlingly dreamy or ploddingly predictable.

A work of near-existential pointlessness. It's true to the anarchic, silly spirit of the original clowning, but there's very little else to it.

Touchback may accurately be called cornball hokum by some, but it's nevertheless a well-made film filled with heart and soul (and Snake Plissken).

Dafoe, as expected, is magnificent in the taciturn role, but the film tends to falter when he's not out stalking, combining as it does elements of family drama, environmental outrage, and outright suspense.

True love is never having to say goodbye … because when you look in the mirror, there s/he is.

Of course, if you loathed the first film, this one probably won't do much to change your mind. But fans, and I count myself among them, of the Weitz brothers' unexpectedly enjoyable original will find themselves in a familiar and perhaps comforting place … filthy language, risqué situations, die-hard friendships, and all.

I've always said, "If you've seen one god, you've seen them all," and Wrath of the Titans only serves to underscore my point.

This artful documentary about renowned Tokyo sushi master Jiro Ono is not going to help save Charlie the Tuna one iota.

The Hunger Games is first and foremost an adventure/survival story, and director Ross keeps things moving with nary a moment of downtime. There's precious little fat on the script; it's a lean, mean antifascist machine, and Lawrence is at once winsome and spectacularly engaging as Katniss (so much so that all her male costars pale into near-blandness in comparison).

Based on actual events, this claustrophobic epic is as emotional as they come: a Holocaust story shot through with a layer of darkness both literal and figurative

Quite likely the most original dance film you'll see this year, The FP is awash in silliness that probably took ages to script, but the film's goofy heart and soul (yes, it has one) is what sticks with you in the end and makes this crazed film into a potential cult-movie masterpiece.

Its most remarkable featis sustaining the level of forebodeingly atmospheric suspense.

Old-school "Gosh, wow!" sense-of-wonder filmmaking is in short supply in these anxious days, and John Carter (of Mars!) left me with my disbelief in suspended animation and once or twice with goosebumps dotting my arms. And that's enough for me.

Tonally one of the strangest films of the year thus far, Project X is at heart a John Hughes-esque celebration of that fleeting teenage moment prior to actual adulthood when throwing a badass backyard party could instantaneously elevate your social status, and cement bonds of friendship that would last a lifetime, and get you laid all in one go.

At 134 minutes, Crazy Horse could have used some judicious editing, but that relatively minor quibble aside, it provides a revealing and intimate look (as if there could be any other kind) at an institution both familiar and utterly alien.

Immensely entertaining, Coriolanus is chock-full o' gore and the contemporary trappings of a man and a land divided, both from without and from within.

Seyfried acquits herself admirably in the panicky, hysterical mode, if that's what you're looking for, but by the time the final, goofy revelations roll around, you're slapping yourself for not having just taken a nap instead.

Although not directed by Hiyao Miyazaki (though he executive-produced and co-wrote it), the film retains the look and feel of the "Spirited Away" master's best work, allowing for huge emotions amidst a world of Lilliputian scope.

This time out, the action is in 3-D, which amounts to a few shots of flaming motorcycle parts comin' at ya, but little else.

But Pine playing 1960s-era Shatner – sometimes subtly, sometimes not? That's a terrific gag. Really, it is. Totally inspired. It's just not enough to save this otherwise cookie-cutter bromantic comedy from being anything other than what it is: an inoffensive yawn.

This is highly personal artwork writ in a grand, towering script, and all the more intellectually and artistically legible for it.

Director Espinosa stages the endless action with a tremendous flair that recalls John Woo's grittier moments, and cinematographer Oliver Wood, who shot Woo's finest Hollywood moment, "Face/Off," gives the whole violent show a downright brackish look that borders on the sublime.

The result is a goofy-weird mishmash of some pretty swell CGI creatures and some downright lousy screenwriting.

What makes The Innkeepers such an unnerving experience isn't the outright horror but rather the lack of it. West mines every single floorboard creek and shadowy corridor for maximum frisson; this film ventures far beyond creepy and into the rarely explored land of genuine, incremental fear.

It's a disturbing film on many, many levels, but beautifully shot (by Seamus McGarvey) and shot through with a horrific sense of false hope. The kid is not all right.

Red Tails is both a stirring and simplistic tribute to the men that not only shattered the U.S. Army Air Corps' racial barrier but also saved the lives of many a white, B-17 crew member, all while downing countless numbers of Hitler's formidable, jet-propelled Luftwaffe.

In the end it's all much ado about not so much, a semifunctional thriller that tingles but never terrifies. Ledge schmedge.

Albert Nobbs is the furthest thing from a comedy, although as a character study of cultural mores and stations and the lengths human beings will go to to circumvent them, it's fascinating stuff.

For all its kiss kiss, bang bang, Haywire ends up feeling as hollow as the points on Mallory Kane's 9mm ammo.

The cynic in me notes that the whole, dismal enterprise is just a cheap steal from Roger Corman's 1955 film "Day the World Ended." At least that single set-bound cheapie had a three-eyed mutant to enliven the otherwise stagy proceedings.

The Devil Inside offers proof, if any were needed, that demons run rampant in Hollywood, possessing otherwise intelligent and creative people to make absolutely shitty "gotcha!" mockumonstrosities like this one.

Beneath the Darkness has nada on Don Coscarelli's epic "Phantasm" saga or, for that matter, Norman Bates' clear-eyed if psychotic shenanigans. It's strictly a guilty pleasure.

This is exactly the sort of film I wasn't expecting from either Gorak or his producers. In many too-obvious ways this is just a formulaic riff on Spielberg's "War of the Worlds."

What's so intensely pleasurable about The Artist, however, is not its predetermined seriocomic trajectory but the endless parade of smartly creative and self-referential gags, which include all manner of sly, silent delights; the inevitable Jack Russell; and even an extended orchestral cue of Bernard Herrmann's, cribbed outright from "Vertigo."

A cracking good adventure film well worthy of classic Saturday-afternoon matinee status. It's also, in myriad ways, a more youthful version of Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."...What you don't have, however, is a great movie.

It's a knockout, sucker punch of a performance, and although it doesn't completely erase the memory of Rapace (and why should it?), Mara's doomy gaze cuts through the hype and bores straight into your soul.

The final 30 odd minutes of this revisionist Holmes explodathon are downright thrilling, and it should go without saying but we'll restate it for the record: Downey Jr. inhabits the role of Sherlock Holmes to a near-molecular level.

Left me with the feeling I've seen much of this before. It's not that I'd like something better, it's just that I'd like something new.

Padilha's film offers no easy answers, but the title is a tip off as to where at least his sympathies lie.

Knuckle is the real deal, with the strapping, brutally human Traveller clans butting heads with not only one another but with the very future of their subculture's existence.

Despite its short running time, Being Elmo is an engrossingly layered documentary.

It is with immense pleasure that I can report that Disney's Muppet reboot movie is an absolute delight.

Sarah Smith pulls the various threads of this wholly original – well, as original as can be reasonably expected given the thousands of cinematic iterations Christmastime has provoked over the years – together into a very coherent, visually stunning, oftentimes laugh-out-loud hilarious holiday film.

I'm not sure which is more freakish: the fact that this savagely unfun and relentlessly generic Adam Sandler comedy has spawned its own (infinitely more entertaining) Internet meme or the realization that something has gone seriously awry with the decision-making process of Al Pacino's agent.

Herzog, ever the eccentric filmmaker on a mission, may have met his match in this man of the cloth.

Banderas, taking time off from voicing kids' films and appearing in Robert Rodriguez outings, plays Ledgard with just the right amount of borderline-freaky, intensity, and Anaya is another of Almodovar's terrifically talented and shockingly beautiful female leads.

Durkin's film seems to exist in its own fractured dream state. It's hypnotic, narcotic, and trembling on the verge of either dread or redemption or some hazy state of nothingness in between.

An excellently cast biopic about yet another self-destructive genius who burnt out but will never fade away – at least not in France, or wherever cigarettes, alcohol, and sex are still allowed.

What The Rum Diary lacks in narrative astonishment it almost makes up for in boozy charm. Depp, Ribisi, and Rispoli are a sight to behold.

Unlikely to be either the tea party or Occupy America's first pick for best film of the year, Margin Call is nevertheless a surprisingly adroit effort to A) explain the birth pains of our current financial woes, and B) show what it might have been like, in these first few hours within the confines of an early investment trading firm casualty.

"Shakespeare in Love" it ain't, but the wealth of stage and screen talent on display, most if not all of whom have essayed one or another of the Bard's characters in the past (including a modern-day introduction by Sir Derek Jacobi), make for a pleasantly ridiculous descent into utter confabulation.

There's punishment and then there's prolonged, squirm-inducing psychological torture, which is a more accurate description of All's Faire in Love, a romantic comedy that will only be "romantic" to audience members under the age of 14 and utterly devoid of genuine yuks and the necessary rom-com spark.

It plays very much like it advertises itself: a mixtape – Fear of a Black Planet, then and now.

The film has a Leone eye (courtesy of cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchía) coupled with a drowsy, doomy pace which, emboldened by the salt-licked Bolivian settings and the finely calibrated acting from all, makes for a phantasmagoric trip down a strangely different memory lane.

More funhouse spook show than actual horror movie but, like the black magic roller coaster ride it's predicated on, it has a startling amount of jolts, frissons, and downright freak-outs to qualify as the best teen date movie of the month if not the year. Boo. Scary.

Heijningen's The Thing is tightly paced, has enough imaginative horror to satisfy even the most jaded gorehound, and never strays too far from its source, so why do you come away from it feeling like it was the runner-up in a daylight nightmare festival?

There are some moments of blessed levity to the otherwise mordant melodramatics...That's not enough to sustain interest in the Taylors and their toxic emotional foibles, however.

Fans of the considerably more pedestrian "Julie & Julia" will likely have to attach drool buckets to their chins in order to avoid hours of tedious mopping up, so lusciously bizarre are the comestibles on display here.

The film provides a whole new way of looking at the same old dead things. Eat up.

With its combustible mix of high-octane action and Christian faith, and an overall vibe that falls somewhere between bloodthirsty nihilism and an unshakable belief in the twinned powers of religious redemption and obsession, Machine Gun Preacher is certainly the strangest examination of grace under AK-47 fire to merit a mainstream release in ages.

All of this is fair "can you take it?" territory, but in he end you find yourself wondering where Nineties-era German cinema-transgressor Jörg Buttgereit is, and when he might deign to make "Nekromantik 3." As for Human Centipede 2, well, frankly it kind of sucks ass. And we mean that literally.

A light but emotionally heady confection from France.

Dream House is neither haunting (as the marketing appears to promise) nor all that original. But it does, thank goodness for small favors, have Elias Koteas.

Filmmaker Steve James is apparently incapable of making an uninteresting documentary, even when his subject matter might presumably be thoroughly played out.

Referencing everything from "Deliverance" to "The Evil Dead" to "Fargo" and nailing its central conceit dead-on (literally!), this is one of those rare genre comedies that near-perfectly balances its blend of grue, guffaws, and gag reflexes.

Ultimately, the remake is, at best, rote and, at worst, totally unnecessary.

Magic Trip comes off nearly as scattershot as the events it depicts, which is a major stumbling block.

It's not a pretty picture, but it is a hellaciously gorgeous and original film.

Its sappy, melodramatic overtones – Bonnie Tyler not included – can be overlooked, as this is as much a political statement as it is a love story.

Which ultimately is what Applause is really about: applying the greasepaint of the daily mundane over the scar tissue of a damaged life, striving for a reality outside of a bottle (and off the stage) while still maintaining some semblance of what made this particular lion roar in the first place.