Peter Debruge

The humor springs either from real-world recognition, as Robespierre and her co-writers go where others fear to tread, or in response to the cast’s lively, eccentrically lived-in characters.

Meticulously acted, gorgeously shot and hilariously insightful about the strange, inarticulable ways people can get on one another’s nerves, this psychological thriller takes its premise to surprising, darkly comic extremes.

Despite the staggering range of material Watermark manages to present — Burtynsky’s five-year undertaking is certainly the most encompassing survey any one artist has ever dedicated to the subject — it’s still just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.

The idea here isn’t to titillate with tawdry teen hormones, but to offer an outlet for all that mental distress young people take on while trying to find their place in the world.

The pic owes its believability to Asser, who served as a therapist similar to Oliver’s character, drawing from his experience to shape the world. Asser brings more than just realism, however, crafting the central father-son relationship on the foundation of classical Greek tragedy.

Awful Nice carves out all the touchy-feely stuff that makes Judd Apatow movies run two reels too long in favor of a jump-cut style that eliminates the fat and keeps the jokes coming.

While more coherent than much of Anderson’s recent work, the film proves less successful at combining destruction and damsel-in-distress storytelling within the same frame, serving up blurry images of Milo trying to rescue Cassia while the city crumbles around them.

Best known as the screenwriter of such subtext-rich adaptations as “The Wings of the Dove” and “Drive,” Amini excels at conveying the subtle, unspoken tensions between characters, selecting a tightrope-risky example with which to make his directorial debut and orchestrating it with aplomb.

Neither Pena nor the pic itself delivers the necessary dynamism, strained by a modest budget and too few extras to sufficiently re-create a movement that found strength in numbers.

It’s worse than tacky, trivializing depression for a handful of easy laughs and pop-psychology platitudes.

This more broadly appealing project feels daringly frank on the subject of sex. But as is frequently the case with the most saturnalian comedies, it’s actually quite conservative when it comes to allowing its characters to follow through on their uninhibited talk.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller irreverently deconstruct the state of the modern blockbuster and deliver a smarter, more satisfying experience in its place, emerging with a fresh franchise for others to build upon.

Clearly, Wheatley is bored with the paint-by-numbers approach of his horror contemporaries, but has swung so far in the opposite direction here, the result feels almost amateurishly avant garde at times, guilty of the sort of indulgences one barely tolerates in student films.

Happy Christmas desperately needs some real jokes, rather than settling for the bemused chuckles that accompany its banal observations into human nature.

Everything about the three principal teens registers as deserving of “human interest” to Rich Hill’s two helmers, whose generous attitude draws us into this deeply empathetic film.

It’s naughty, campy and wildly uneven.

Perhaps the cleverest thing about Barker-Froyland’s delicately contrived debut is how uncontrived she manages to make it seem.

Love Is Strange never feels anything less than authentic, like a true story shared by close friends.

Using Baltimore’s dirt-bike groups as its entry point, the film offers a remarkable grassroots look at how the system is broken at the inner-city level.

The film amounts to a lousy sort of magic show, schematically pulling strings to prove its own points.

With Boyhood, Linklater has created an uncanny time capsule, inviting auds to relive their own upbringing through a series of artificial memories pressed like flowers between the pages of a family photo album.

Helmer Lenny Abrahamson (“Garage,” “Adam & Paul”) puts the pic’s eccentricity to good use, luring in skeptics with jokey surrealism and delivering them to a profoundly moving place.

Chazelle proves an exceptional builder of scenes, crafting loaded, need-to-succeed moments that grab our attention and hold it tight.

The critters look cute, but behave less so, while the competing-heists concept never quite takes off.

Pavich does an admirable job tracking down surviving parties (except for the suspicious-sounding cast), opting for a humorous rather than indignant tone to the interviews.

A partly authentic, partly scripted behind-the-scenes featurette that never quite conveys the star’s “high/curious” interest in all things taboo.

As impressive as these visual elements prove to be, the film struggles to grab and maintain audiences’ interest, whether or not they know the underlying legend by heart.

Hoogendijk has created an artifact that, while not exactly elegant, 400 years hence may prove as vital a window into Amsterdam culture as any of the Dutch masterpieces hanging in the museum itself.

Visually, “Walking With Dinosaurs” dazzles with its combination of Animal Logic-animated CG creatures...and beautiful practical backgrounds... Less dazzling is the constant stream of jokey banter, which thwarts the pic’s educational potential and caps its target age awfully low.

It’s one thing to declare sex a fact of life and insist that audiences confront their unease at seeing it depicted (or, equally constructive, their intense excitation at its mere mention), but quite another to fashion a fictional woman’s life around nothing but sex. As courageously depicted by Gainsbourg, Jo is ultimately a tragic character.

Racy subject aside, the film provides a good-humored yet serious-minded look at sexual self-liberation, thick with references to art, music, religion and literature, even as it pushes the envelope with footage of acts previously relegated to the sphere of pornography.

At this finely tooled tragedy’s core towers Emilie Dequenne, no longer the feral young thing seen in 1999′s “Rosetta,” but a trapped animal pushed to devastating extremes.

This off-putting pic requires open minds and iron nerves.

It is, in short, everything you’d expect from a crowd-sourced documentary, designed to celebrate its subject, while mostly just validating the aesthetic taste of its backers.

With the aid of Johnsen’s doc to overcome the obstacles China has put in his path, Ai’s voice carries louder than ever before.

Jeremy Lovering’s tense debut might have worked better had it left more to the imagination. Still, crisp camerawork and amplified sound yield paranoia aplenty.

The circumstances may be contrived, but the characters feel refreshingly genuine.

As the years go by and the kids grow — perhaps the only real benefit of Winterbottom’s approach — time begins to run together, making it all too easy for the mind to wander.

[Francis] Lawrence and his team have calibrated the entire experience for maximum engagement. And while its pleasures can’t touch the thrill of seeing the Death Star destroyed — not yet, at least — the film runs circles around George Lucas’ ability to weave complex political ideas into the very fabric of B-movie excitement.

This been-there-done-that story marks a pretty banal debut for writer-director Alain Marie, who seems far more interested in aping Refn and early-career Michael Mann than in finding his own style.

The result is just about the most fun you can have while learning, partly because it strips away any tangents beyond the task at hand, offering a lean, 80-minute account of how this crazy guy erected his own Everest and then proceeded to climb it.

Like too many of Sayles’ films, Go for Sisters seems bound to slip through the cracks, not quite memorable enough to make a lasting impression.

This sloppy, button-pushing black comedy reveals a crew desperately in need of counseling — less in anger management than in the fundamentals of screenwriting, camerawork and structure.

An impressive, thought-provoking astro-adventure that benefits from the biggest screen available.

The script is nearly all dialogue, including several eloquent spoken passages toward the end, but it’s a lousy story, ineptly constructed and rendered far too difficult to follow.

Disguised as a drunken cartwheel through expat paradise, Mark Jarrett’s striking feature juggles questions of mortality along its rowdy cross-country path.

Fancy-sounding dialogue and handsome widescreen lensing goes only so far to disguise the shallowness of the underlying material.

Cody shows promise as a director, paving over the bumpy patches with clever song choices, but needs to mix things up if she hopes to continue.

It may not be balanced or especially sophisticated filmmaking, suffering from a misty-eyed oversimplification of what relationships (gay or straight) actually demand. But for many, it’s precisely the sort of emotional eye-opener needed for young people to find inspiration and naysayers to reconsider their attitudes.

Rather than channeling James Thurber’s satirical tone, Stiller plays it mostly earnest, spinning what feels like a feature-length “Just Do It” ad.

Instead of explaining the system through conventional narration, which would have been extremely helpful, the filmmakers immerse auds in the world they found, capturing its subjects’ behavior with startling candor.

What Erica Rivinoja, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s script lacks in lingering nutritional value, it compensates for with amusing food puns. If nothing else, the pic’s zany tone and manic pace are good for a quick-hit sugar high.

A scrappy portrait of half a dozen renegade gold-diggers.

Ultimately, the enigmatic surface conflict — in which a man must contend with his own carbon copy as rival — proves to be the film’s own worst enemy, for its dark, David Lynchian allure proves almost too compelling, obscuring the material’s deeper themes.

Affectionately captures the tail end of a culture in which specialized dice, character sheets and hand-painted figurines were the gateway to elaborate flights of imagination.

Chemistry you can fake, but charm is far harder to pull off, and Baggage Claim never quite succeeds on that front.

Of all living actresses, only Huppert could capture nuances that alternately elicit sympathy and fierce sexual attraction to a recent stroke victim.

One dead giveaway that the comedy isn’t working is the film’s score, which overcompensates throughout by attempting to bolster every second with bouncy energy.

Granted, Landesman feels an obligation to history, but there’s something ponderously obvious about the way so many of these scenes are played.

While Palo Alto doesn’t seem to be saying anything new exactly, it boasts a clear and confident voice of its own, and it will be exciting to see where the young Coppola goes from here.

John Turturro brings sensitivity and intelligence to a subject that could have gone terribly awry in Fading Gigolo.

Shepard balances a livelier-than-life script with striking, super-saturated images, which makes the film feel bigger than it is.

The film manages to educate without ever feeling didactic, and to entertain in the face of what would, to any other character, seem like a grim life sentence.

A film that lays emotions on the line and then drives them home with music.

Much like a work of art, the film invites a range of reactions, though it’s far easier to process than the daubs, doodles and other weird works that now hang all over the country.

There’s something decidedly old-fashioned — and also dull as ditchwater — about Jonathan Teplitzky’s retelling of events.

Decently acted despite screenplay shortcomings.

To the extent that Adele’s hunger for affection resonates with audiences, what emerges is a powerful — if implausible — romance.

Not just one of the great racing movies of all time, but a virtuoso feat of filmmaking in its own right, elevated by two of the year’s most compelling performances.

Though the film brims with memorable characters, the show ultimately belongs to Ejiofor, who upholds the character’s dignity throughout.

[A] slick, smarter-than-usual conspiracy yarn.

In angling for suspense, this low-budget stunt relies a bit too heavily on our suspension of disbelief.

Director D.J. Caruso offers a practical solution to the issue of adolescent bullying, as its two young protags respond to a case of vicious hazing not with despair or retaliation, but through teamwork and character-building.

The director commissioned Struzan to paint the one-sheet for his debut, “Sexina: Popstar P.I.,” and while this sophomore effort is no masterpiece, it’s far more deserving of Struzan’s talent.

The source material may be David Sedaris (this marks the first time the essayist has allowed one of his pieces to be adapted), but the tone couldn’t be more Kyle Patrick Alvarez, who once again steers auds to some gloriously uncomfortable places.

An epic showcase for mediocre CGI and slapdash screenwriting.

As first features go, A Teacher demonstrates a willingness to provoke, but doesn’t seem to understand the minimum expectations most audiences place on films in terms of both incident and characterization.

The Wolverine boasts one of the best pulp-inspired scripts yet. It’s still full of corny dialogue...but there’s a genuine elegance to the way it establishes Logan’s tortured condition and slowly brings the character around to recovering his heroic potential, methodically setting up and paying off ideas as it unfolds.

Lambert brings a forlorn dimension to his seductive young role, but Bell never really convinces as the older woman. Despite flirting with controversy, the actress seems reluctant to plunge fully into potential unlikability, nor does the film quite give her the chance.

Here, the laughs come not from the silly voices but a blend of snappy editing and clever character bits, including a recurring joke about an inappropriately named sidekick who calls himself White Shadow (Michael Patrick Bell).

Extravagant but exhausting...this over-the-top oater delivers all the energy and spectacle audiences have come to expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer production, but sucks out the fun in the process,

Collectively, Thanks for Sharing boasts more than enough personalities to keep things interesting, but it lacks the casual spontaneity to make these characters’ journeys anything other than predictable.

While the plot — too low-key to be called a thriller — points toward obvious extramarital cliches, delicate changes in the overall mood reveal deeper truths.

Breaking it down, The Heat has been engineered to deliver the laughs, and the result certainly does, despite coming alarmingly near to botching the procedural elements along the way.

A debut effort that occasionally bogs down in its own symbolism.

While not quite as charming or unique as the original, Despicable Me 2 comes awfully close.

Trading her improv-based filmmaking style for a more traditional screenplay-grounded model, Lynn Shelton delivers an uneven mix of half-formed conflicts.

More irrelevant than irreverent, the unworthy script from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s” Chris Matheson might play to apocalyptically stoned college kids, but offers nothing in the way of broader social satire, suggesting the waste of a perfectly good Reckoning — not to mention the talents of a cast far funnier than the doom-and-gloom results suggest.

Though Resnais’ gamble seems to have failed, it’s encouraging to see a director on the brink of 90 still willing to experiment in a way most helmers half his age wouldn’t dare.

This rich, beautifully rendered film boasts an arrestingly soulful performance from Marion Cotillard.

Assembled from three years’ worth of visits to one of the world’s most volatile hot zones, the format of Stolen Seas is as every bit as exciting as its content, raising beguiling questions about how the team managed to acquire the footage so stunningly interwoven by editor Garret Price.

Even the hackiest of Hollywood writers would have known how to fix its considerable script problems.

Apart from its general knock against ageism in Hollywood, The Congress doesn’t have much insight to offer on the subject.

The wallpaper emotes more than Ryan Gosling does in Only God Forgives, an exercise in supreme style and minimal substance.

Plop plop. Fizz fizz. Oh, what a missed opportunity it is! In the well-cast but seldom funny satire And Now a Word From Our Sponsor.

Violet & Daisy feels radically disconnected from recognizable human behavior.

The film isn’t so much funny as it is merely amusing — a laundry list of inappropriate and potentially embarrassing moments that strive mightily, but never quite manage to land the laugh.

Relative to the major brands, the intimate, handcrafted approach should yield more flavor. Instead, Drinking Buddies offers mostly froth.

Firth and Blunt make a strange couple, and Ariola a musicvideo helmer making his feature debut, should have devoted more time to making the chemistry work than to sustaining the melancholy mood.

More inspired by than adapted from Juan Mayorga’s play “The Boy in the Last Row,” this low-key thriller feels like a return to form for Ozon, whose pictures lost their psychosexual edge after the helmer stopped collaborating with Emmanuele Bernheim (“Swimming Pool”).

Gordon-Levitt’s script can be a bit on-the-nose at times, but that’s an indulgence easily forgiven in a debut feature, and this ensemble winningly sells the movie’s tricky tonal mix.

This compelling human drama finds fresh energy in the inspirational-teacher genre, constantly revealing new layers to its characters.

The satire is firmly seated in character, and no one understands how well a good homicide can elucidate character better than Wheatley.

Audiences may not care about this gang when the party starts, but once the dust settles, you’ve gotta admit, they made for pretty good company.

Slow as molasses but every bit as rich.

Despite the inherent perversity of the concept, Mosley succeeds in maintaining a certain sweetness throughout. Even more impressively, she makes her low-budget enterprise look as slick as most midrange studio comedies, demonstrating herself a director with both imagination and technical ingenuity.

As the work of one young man bursting with inspiration, the film is a giddy thing to absorb, allowing complete strangers to witness someone performing open-heart surgery on himself.

It’s a vibrant journey, but not a terribly illuminating one.

For most of its running time, this personality-packed docu is nothing short of absorbing as it recaps the essential role African-American background singers played in shaping the sound of 20th-century pop music.

Two half-stories about fathers and sons on opposite sides of the law do not a full movie make in The Place Beyond the Pines, the overlong and under-conceived reunion between “Blue Valentine” director Derek Cianfrance and lookalike star Ryan Gosling.

A trippy variation on the dream-within-a-dream movie, Boyle’s return-to-form crimer constantly challenges what audiences think they know, but neglects to establish why they should care.

A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen.

The conflict at the core of the WikiLeaks saga is dramatically lacking.

The beauty of the footage is undeniable, and the aimlessness never overstays its welcome as the film documents that strange stretch in our lives when nothing seems to matter more than the present moment, suspended in a sort of idle immortality.

Never before has anyone made a documentary like The Act of Killing, and the filmmakers seem at a loss in terms of how to organize the many threads of what they capture...Still, essential and enraging, The Act of Killing is a film that begs to be seen, then never watched again.

While Leon’s script can’t help but be episodic as the characters scheme their way out of one scrape after another, their shenanigans are compulsively watchable, brimming with enough details to make this modest film grow large in the memory.

Emperor’s bloodless presentation fails on a fundamental dramatic level, playing like the fancy version of a junior-high educational filmstrip, down to the false suspense of Alex Heffes’ corny ticking-clock score.

As Scandi directors go, Niels Arden Oplev couldn’t be hotter. After putting his stamp on “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the Dane has what appears to be his pick of projects. So why follow it up with such revenge-fantasy dreck as Dead Man Down, a derivative collection of brazen plot holes and latenight-cable cliches into which he drags “Dragon” star Noomi Rapace?

The comedy feels forced as Fey works overtime to insert unnecessary zingers at the tail of every scene. If the cast weren’t so endearing, her actions could easily sour an audience on the whole experience, and Admission digs itself a hole only an ensemble this appealing can escape.

Promising crude straight-boy humor, but delivering sensitive buddy moments and tons of male nudity, this by-the-numbers gut-buster looks slick, moves fast and packs enough laughs to enliven spring-break receipts and earn its helmers more work.

The story of a teen desperate for a father figure who finds encouragement from a wild-and-crazy water-park employee -- rather than from the guy auditioning to be his stepdad -- can be explosively funny in parts, but overall feels pretty familiar, relying more on its cast than the material to win favor.

Mud poses as a mere adolescent adventure tale but explores a rich vein of grown-up concerns, exploring codes of honor, love and family too solid to be shaken by modernizing forces.

Potter seems at a loss to communicate the ideas behind her agonizingly elliptical picture, leaving auds to marvel at the gorgeous cinematography and scarlet-red hair of its heroine, earnestly played by Elle Fanning in a project undeserving of her talents.

There's a reason creepy character actors seldom play lead, and Karpovsky's amusingly off-kilter quality is better suited to the background, while Prediger (as the stranger he desperately wants to ditch, lest his ex-g.f. discover his infidelity) has the makings of an indie star.

Offsetting stiff acting with rich atmosphere, visuals and music, this long-awaited picture hits the novel's key plot points without denying its spiritual soul.

It's nice to have actors of Sarandon and Pepper's caliber onboard for the office-bound wheeler-dealer scenes, but mostly, it's the prospect of witnessing Johnson at the helm of an 18-wheeler as he rams his way through machine-gun fire that excites.

Willis still packs that rapscallion charm, balancing his wisecracking, reluctant-hero shtick with the unstoppable, all-American quality that earned the original film its title. But the chemistry between him and Courtney is nonexistent, with the younger thesp, who makes co-star Cole Hauser look expressive, adding so little to the equation, one can only hope the studio doesn't plan to pass the franchise on to him.

Fortunately, writer-director Richard LaGravenese has jettisoned most of the novel and refashioned its core mythology and characters into a feverishly enjoyable guilty pleasure.

Considering how graphic Campos is willing to be, "restrained" may not the right word for his approach, and yet Simon Killer withholds so much that some amount of frustration is sure to follow.

With Identity Thief, Melissa McCarthy proves she's got what it takes to carry a feature, however meager the underlying material.

If nonchalance were an Olympic sport, Max would be a gold medalist, and watching Somebody Up There Likes Me is about as much fun as being a spectator at that event might sound.

Hoping to do for flesh-eaters what "The Twilight Saga" did for vampires, albeit on a smaller scale, writer-director Jonathan Levine spins Isaac Marion's novel into a broadly appealing date movie about a zombified Romeo and his lively Juliet.

Entertaining, though conventionally told war story.

The cops play things as dirty as the crooks in Gangster Squad, an impressively pulpy underworld-plunger that embellishes on a 1949 showdown between a dedicated team of LAPD officers and Mob-connected Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) for control of the city.

An immensely satisfying taste of antebellum empowerment packaged as spaghetti-Western homage... A bloody hilarious (and hilariously bloody) Christmas counter-programmer.

Strong on texture but taxingly light on narrative.

Reacher is a brawny action figure whose exploits would have been a good fit for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone back in the day, but feel less fun when delegated to a leading man like Tom Cruise. The star is too charismatic to play someone so cold-blooded, and his fans likely won't appreciate the stretch.

Jackson and his team seem compelled to flesh out the world of their earlier trilogy in scenes that would be better left to extended-edition DVDs (or omitted entirely), all but failing to set up a compelling reason for fans to return for the second installment.

Far more ambitious than "The Hurt Locker," yet nowhere near so tripwire-tense, this procedure-driven, decade-spanning docudrama nevertheless rivets for most of its running time.

Considering Haneke's confrontational past, this poignantly acted, uncommonly tender two-hander makes a doubly powerful statement about man's capacity for dignity and sensitivity when confronted with the inevitable cruelty of nature.

Writer-director Brian Savelson drags four characters all the way out to the woods to orchestrate the sort of politely confrontational chamber piece best suited to an Off Off Broadway stage in In Our Nature, an eloquent but overly rehearsed drama.

Though named after a party girl's pet Chihuahua, Starlet could just as easily describe the two exceptional first-timers making their debuts in this brittle, beautifully understated San Fernando Valley character study.

The result looks as much like a Natural History Museum diorama as it sounds: a respectful but waxy re-creation that feels somehow awe-inspiring yet chillingly lifeless to behold, the great exception being Jones' alternately blistering and sage turn as Stevens.

With plenty to appeal to boys and girls, old and young, Walt Disney Animation Studios has a high-scoring hit on its hands in this brilliantly conceived, gorgeously executed toon, earning bonus points for backing nostalgia with genuine emotion.

What's missing cast-wise is an appealing personality in the sidekick role, and Webb is no match for Mads Mikkelsen.

The cross-dressing "Madea" star seems out of his depth playing the hard-boiled detective made famous by Morgan Freeman in "Along Came a Spider" and "Kiss the Girls." Even action helmer Rob Cohen ("The Fast and the Furious," "XXX") seems to be off his game here.

Putting the "intelligence" in MI6, Skyfall reps a smart, savvy and incredibly satisfying addition to the 007 oeuvre, one that places Judi Dench's M at the center of the action.

Ultimately, the mock-doc device works because Gyllenhaal and Pena so completely reinvent themselves in-character. Instead of wearing the roles like costumes or uniforms, they let the job seep into their skin, a feat without which "End of Watch's" pseudo-reality never would have worked.

A stunning debut that finds its dandelion-haired heroine fighting rising tides and fantastic creatures in a mythic battle against modernity.

Stanton has been given the resources to create an expansive, expensive world, but lacks the instincts to direct live-action, a limitation that shows most in the performances. Bare of chest and fair of feature, Kitsch doesn't exhibit enough charisma to carry a project of this scale.

This game-changing instant classic will doubtless inspire imitators, onscreen and in backyards everywhere, en route to redefining what a new generation expects of its mice-will-play movies.

For all the tyrannical disdain he's shown other filmmakers over the years, von Trier once again demonstrates a mastery of classical technique, extracting incredibly strong performances from his cast while serving up a sturdy blend of fly-on-the-wall naturalism and jaw-dropping visual effects.

The largely elliptical script feels a few drafts shy of focus, with the thriller elements undermining the juicier questions of why one joins a cult and how life can go back to normal later.

For those eager to tease out what Leigh’s conceptual exercise is about, the key no doubt lies in Lucy’s relation to her own mortality, with each descent into sleep resembling a death of sorts.

Starring Ryan Gosling as a Hollywood stuntman/getaway driver, Drive takes the tired heist-gone-bad genre out for a spin, delivering fresh guilty-pleasure thrills in the process.

Once again, the DreamWorks team demonstrates that humor is the primary weapon in its arsenal.

Incendies vaults Denis Villeneuve to the status of serious director.

Where "Elizabethtown" pretends to have the meaning of life, Shopgirl hones in on a few telling details, then allows audiences to fill in the rest.

In a stroke of combined wisdom and humility, rather than pretending to have the answers, Casal and Diggs are content to pose the questions, relying on their considerable wit and comedic charm to present such tricky topics in refreshingly engaging fashion.

Woody's a master wordsmith, and here he's crafted a bit of audience-friendly fare that's smart without feeling exclusionary. It's a portrait of elite society--and the hangers-on who wish to penetrate it--made in an surprisingly accessible way.

When confronted with real problems--and there's enough melodrama here to top a movie-of-the-week marathon on Lifetime--these otherwise empowered characters seem helpless to defend themselves.

With a hint of that my-way problem-solving approach, The Living Daylights freshens the Bond series’ cornball formula elements while reprising details that had made director John Glen’s debut, For Your Eyes Only, such a superior outing.

Something about the sequel, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, doesn't seem nearly as obnoxious as the original.

With an exciting way out, the audience would have gladly overlooked all the loose ends from earlier in the movie. But the way Hall plays it, he undermines the early style and intelligence of his all-black action movie, taking audiences for the wrong kind of ride in the end.

In a year rich with animation options, Happy Feet stands head and shoulders above its competition.

This is precisely the type of moviegoing experience engineered for those who still get a laugh when the Baha Men hit "Who Let the Dogs Out?" accompanies a doggie mayhem montage.

While this Kid isn't up to "Spy Kids" standards, the good news is the film hews closer to the high-concept kids' movies of the 1980s than to all that Disney Channel goo that's been repackaged for the big screen lately.

Exceptionally strong performances from the entire cast draw you into the movie's deliberately provocative world, a "Lord of the Flies"–like realm where parents are noticeably absent.

The entire movie rides on Paul Kaye's performance.

Imagine what someone like Danny DeVito might have done with the material, taking it in that darker "War of the Roses" direction instead of languishing in this sunny, not-nearly-sinister-enough "Legally Blonde" territory.

A filmmaker like John Sayles ("Sunshine State") who shares Hiaasen's issue-conscious outlook might have framed the lesson a bit more eloquently. But Shriner blows it.

Nothing happens as you might expect it to, but the Pinocchio ending is definitely out.

If you were hoping to find another "Nemo," you're likely to be let down by this insincere and borderline unpleasant alternative.

It's a tomb-raiding adventure movie several notches below Indiana Jones status.

As endearing as Ferrell and Kidman are on their own, there's just no chemistry between them onscreen.

If there's one thing missing above all else from today's action movies, it's the lost art of the car chase.

The explanation for all this mayhem eludes me, and even a lame last-minute twist isn't enough to cover the fact that Jigsaw ain't as clever as the movie thinks he is.

Delivers platinum performances, especially Sharon Warren as Ray's tough-lovin' mother, Kerry Washington as his lily-tempered wife, and Regina King as his spitfire mistress.

Zombie's film plays more like an experimental pastiche than an outright homage to those classic road-trip-gone-wrong movies.

On the surface, each of these characters fits a familiar Latino stereotype--teen harlot, "el bandido" and male buffoon--yet the movie insists on giving each person dimension.

For all of 10 minutes, Gray Matters looks like it might have accomplished the impossible: uncovering a romantic-comedy scenario audiences haven't seen a million times before.

As a portrait of late-millennial nihilism, The Living End rejects the sympathetic bent of every afflicted-by-AIDS portrayal before or since.

Diesel valiantly but unsuccessfully tries to raise this inane bit of Mr. Mommery above its afternoon-special standing.

There's too much going on to take it all in. It's a shame, really. Robots boasts some of the most vibrant visual design ever captured on screen.

Ultimately, what happens with the house is not only entertaining, but a marvel of what animation can accomplish in this day and age.

Cutting to the emotional core of what social media says about us, the result is as much a time capsule of our relationship to (and reliance upon) modern technology as it is a cutting-edge digital thriller.

Amounts to Chicken Soup for the Soul-style torture -- unless you like that kind of thing.

On paper, it may sound like high-level calculus, but on screen, The Last Mimzy is perfectly charming. Like "Cocoon" for the elementary-school set, the box transforms Noah and Emma's lives.

Unlike this summer's compulsively watchable "Hustle & Flow," Get Rich or Die Tryin' captures none of the thrill of finding your voice, recording a demo or landing a concert.

The humor is so satisfying in its moment-to-moment pleasures that it's almost unsportsmanlike to criticize the bigger picture.

If nothing else, You I Love delivers a brisk and spirited little taste of contemporary Russian culture through the eyes of three spontaneous, unpredictable and oddly charming characters.

With its predictable confrontations and tacky fantasy sequences, you feel writer/director Jane Anderson steering the material toward schmaltzy movie-of-the-week territory at every turn.

Night Watch represents the best in Russian special effects, a collaboration between 42 different CGI specialty firms all working in the service of a single goal: to create the nation's most visually transgressive film.

When the big tennis finale arrives, Metz finds all sorts of ways to make the match interesting, blending urgent music, creative camera vantages and ridiculously hyperbolic announcer commentary to generate the desired tension. But the real reason we’re invested is far simpler than that: Metz and his cast have made us care about both Borg and McEnroe by this point.

What's missing is some faith in the audience's intelligence and, more importantly, the jokes.

Fans will cheer at Schumacher's faithful inflation of Webber's vision, which interprets all that pomp and bombast as if the show were some sort of overblown Vegas attraction.

Basically the first movie all over again, with plenty more of the bridge-jumping, rocket-launching action that audiences loved about the original.

Legrand’s achievement — his integrity, one might say — is that he’s managed to cut to the marrow of the situation while remaining keenly sensitive to how such things play out in the real world.

The Children Act is that rarest of things: an adult drama, written and interpreted with a sensitivity to mature human concerns.

True to form, How to Eat Fried Worms forgoes flatulence jokes for positive examples.

It's basically just another watered-down version of Dead Poets Society and countless other inspirational-teacher films, but its emotional impact is undeniable.

The best part of “Miseducation” is the diverse group of adolescents sharing Cameron’s experience.

In his first feature, director Joshua Marston passes no judgments. He doesn't condemn drugs. He merely depicts the system that has arisen to support this illicit trade.

It would seem Towne is too much in love with the book to recognize its fundamental limitations as a film.

Unfortunately, this dimwit concept barely has enough spark to power a single strand of Christmas lights, much less rival the classic-by-comparison "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" in side-splitting Yuletide snafus.

Although Scott seems to be making a point about both parties' ongoing feud for Jerusalem , the movie seems more like a classic Western than a contemporary political allegory.

There's a lot to be said for a movie that isn't after instant fame, but only wants to make audiences feel good.

With the careful timing and nuance of a master actor, Sharif turns a two-dimensional sketch into the film's most absorbing character.

One of the great pleasures of the original Love Bug comes in watching all the live-action stunts, and CG just isn't the same.

Like Russia's answer to "The Matrix" and "Lord of the Ring"s trilogies, Day Watch offers the second chapter in an epic battle between the forces of Light and Dark, the result of which is a gaping gray area where nothing much makes sense.

Mixing “gritty” handheld camerawork with an almost zen-like kind of restraint, Green’s approach is frustratingly thin on the kind of specifics that make for rich drama, leaving audiences to fill in the gaps.

Rarely delivers anything above and beyond the scope of the series.

The most significant Bond ingredient missing from Live and Let Die is Q, whose gadgets still play a central role. The film also offers a few key additions, including an illuminating glimpse of Bond’s home.

It's a brisk and lively getaway with genuine personality.

Their movie is cold, and I mean that not as a weather pun, but in the sense that it's impossible to warm up to a character who sees the awful things happening around him strictly in terms of how they affect him.

Amounts to little more than a downbeat soap opera as half a dozen squatters -- hustler, junkie, stripper, queer, fallen Madonna and skank, with a mentally challenged roomie thrown in for good measure -- try to hold their lives together in a grungy New York loft just days before Christmas. Think "Rent" without the music.

Over-production-designed as the film is, Bening and Bell manage to hold their own within it.

[Csupo's] take on Bridge to Terabithia doesn't pander or misrepresent, but instead illustrates the power of open-mindedness in both its forms: creativity and acceptance.

One of those novelistic independent films more concerned with atmosphere and character than the particularities of narrative, where contemplating the backstory is more satisfying than anything we see.

Murderball asks you to put all your assumptions about quadriplegics aside and start over.

While you watch, be sure to scour the background for in-jokes, including cameos by Gromit and other DreamWorks characters, and rest assured that Flushed Away gets even funnier on second viewing.

This is superficial entertainment to say the least. But if you're looking for laughs, then Just Friends is just fine.

Though it basically argues that the surest way to overcome racism is to spend some time getting to know “the other,” Cooper’s film offers audiences no such opportunity, depriving its native characters of so much as a single scene in which they are treated as anything more than abstract plot devices in service of the white folks’ enlightenment.

This is, after all, "Mary Poppins" turned on its head.

American audiences have seen Ju-On. And The Grudge just goes to show why remaking it is such a frivolous idea: What's the use in wasting so much energy if the filmmakers aren't going to fix what was wrong with the movie in the first place?

Almost certain to polarize audiences, this bit of emotional agitprop plays like a watered-down "Short Cuts" or "Magnolia" with a shrill, one-note message: We're all a little bit racist.

Eighth Grade shines as, like, a totally spot-on, you know, portrait of Millennial angst and stuff. That may be how Kayla (and all her peers) talk...but Burnham shows a sociolinguist’s ear for the cadence and flow of 21st-century girl-speak, and Fisher...delivers his dialogue so naturally, you’d swear she’s making it up as she goes along.

Borderline reprehensible, High Tension is a living nightmare, but then, why else would you see it?

Death Sentence would be right at home as one half of "Grindhouse"'s B-movie double bill.

A relatively harmless (and thankfully, not entirely laughless) trifle.

We should be grateful that it exists, if only because it affords a long-overdue leading role to Kelly Macdonald.

In this vibrant character study, newcomer Lázaro Ramos plays Francisco with an almost animal intensity.

The movie is a leaden, slow-moving beast.

But as Western analogies go, Curse achieves an emotional fervor more in keeping with ancient Greek mythology than Elizabethan theater.

One of those slow-baked Southern character studies about taking an old flat tire of a man and finding some way to love him anyway.

Considering how much new additions Rosario Dawson (as Mimi) and Tracie Thoms (as Joanne) bring to the film, it's a shame Columbus didn't introduce more changes.

Whereas E.B. White's beloved novel introduced kids to the cycle of life, tenderly broaching the tricky subject of mortality, this latest movie version plays like just another piece of vegetarian agitprop.

Herzog himself is one of the great lunatic directors of our century, a mad genius who repeatedly attempts to challenge nature and the gods in his own films.

Have you ever noticed how it's always the worst horror movies that go really far out of their way to lay the groundwork for a sequel?

In Year of the Dog, director Mike White willfully violates one of the great unwritten rules of Hollywood screenwriting: Kill as many human characters as you want, just spare the dog.

Enjoyment requires denying the increasingly problematic truth about Bond: As heroes go, 007 represents a bygone notion of the privileged white man taking what’s his and leaving destruction in his wake.

For a horror movie to work, it has to be ABOUT something.

Smile feels like one man's answer to movies increasingly overloaded with sex and violence.

With its ho-hum hero and lackluster love story, The Order would likely be one big implausible bore if it wasn't for production designer Miljen Kreka Kljakovic.

I suspect Scott sees Domino as the ultimate provocation, his way of grabbing Hollywood by the throat and shouting, "You want reality??! I'll give you REALITY!!!" Sort of.

Absence of motive makes the movie provocative; the explanation renders it irrelevant and defuses any interesting debate the film might have inspired.

The Proposition leaves you shell-shocked.

Swedish director Mikael Håfström's Derailed makes "Fatal Attraction" look positively subtle, while mustering none of the nuance or moral complexity (not to mention the sexual chemistry) of "Unfaithful."

There's enough estrogen gone awry in this bitchy teen comedy to make "Mean Girls" look like a Disney after-school special.

Nearly perfect in its own cotton-candy way.

This inventive family movie sets up the most delightful premise, then squanders it on the kind of yawn-inducing CG adventure you might expect from one of those long, plot-heavy cut scenes that slow down video games.

Triple X posed an ideal opportunity for the series to rectify its dismissive treatment of women until this point, putting a lady on equal footing with Bond. To its credit, the film does feature a bit of screwball badinage between the two (a clunky bit about female drivers, unfortunately), but it has yet to introduce a single female character who doesn’t want to sleep with our hero.

Coolidge knows he's not making "Death of a Salesman" here (he names the store managers Glen Gary and Glen Ross in tribute to David Mamet's elegy to the American Dream), but he's got the same eye for detail that made "Office Space" great. What he lacks is Arthur Miller's (or even Mike Judge's) sense for character.

Broken English takes 30 minutes to do what most romantic comedies manage with a simple montage. That's a good thing, by the way.

This jokey tone couldn’t be more different from the relative self-seriousness of helmer John Glen’s first 007 directing effort, For Your Eyes Only, and frankly, I yearn for more of that class.

Valiant enlists a squad of loveable birdbrains to turn the classic fighter-pilot formula into an upbeat adventure film loaded with laughs.

Rojas is played by Penélope Cruz, who's endearing enough, but still comes across coarse and irritating every time she attempts a role in English.

Features the lamest story of any CG-animated feature to date.

The beauty of You Got Served is that it delivers the moves from every vantage point.

Kids deserve an adventure movie like this, one that might inspire them to become junior inventors and ignite their interest in the world's many wonders.

Considering its superlative title (second only to George Stevens's New Testament epic, "The Greatest Story Ever Told"), I'm sorry to report that The Greatest Game Ever Played ranks somewhere in the murky middleground of sports movies.

The hyper-stylized violence, for instance, isn't nearly as senseless as the narrative bits in between. And the ''twist'' employs the same sleight-of-hand as "The Usual Suspects."

A wild buckle-up-and-blast-off adventure that plunges every corner of kids' favorite subject.

Resurrection is a revelation.

Director Dylan Kidd sneaks some pretty profound observations about love and life by us.

The result is like a low-rent "Wizard of Oz" or "Labyrinth," sticking close to the formula of a kid who falls asleep and wakes up in a fantastical wonderland where everything's just a little bit off.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a movie obsessed more with the act of telling a story than the story itself, which explains why, when the movie's finally over, less than half the audience will have understood the finer points of the mystery.

Liebesman hews close to the 2003 pic’s bile-tinged snuff-film aesthetic. His approach falls somewhere between the overwrought sadism of the “Saw” series and the giddy gore-for-gore’s-sake energy of “The Devil’s Rejects,” sharing those films’ twisted notion that today’s auds are willing to embrace such homicidal maniacs as heroes.