Marc Savlov

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.