Rene Rodriguez

If anyone other than Gus Van Sant had directed Restless, the film could have well been impossible to sit through.

Gosling continues to prove he may the best actor of his generation. His performance in The Ides of March, following his comedic turn in "Crazy, Stupid Love" and his portrayal of a stoic loner in "Drive," proves this actor is capable of practically anything.

Abduction is a crass and lowbrow attempt to cash in on a young actor's heat - an exploitation picture where the person being taken advantage of is too young to notice.

Viewers with a strong stomach and an appreciation for surreal humor that borders on horror - the latest film from Spanish wildman Alex de la Iglesia (Perdita Durango, The Day of the Beast) is a must-see proposition.

Red State is as profane and anti-establishment as any of his other films, but the stakes are infinitely higher this time: This Kevin Smith movie has an astonishing body count.

Killer Elite is too formulaic to overcome a been-there, done-that feel.

The movie is an absolute triumph of culturally relevant filmmaking – a film that will thrill and fascinate sport junkies and non-fans alike. If you like baseball, you will love this movie. If you hate baseball, you will still love this movie.

Nothing about Leap Year plays out exactly like you expect, and Rowe prefers to send you home with enigmatic questions instead of clear-cut answers. You may not fully understand Laura, but chances are you won't be able to forget her.

The movie tends to lapse into soapy melodrama and heavy-handed preaching whenever possible, and the feel-good ending that appears out of nowhere essentially negates a lot of what has preceded it, adding one more moral to a movie already weighed down by life lessons.

What ultimately makes Drive so compelling is its characters - sketches given dimension and heft by a superb cast.

Straw Dogs is an artful provocation - a meditation on masculinity and societal mores in the guise of an explosive thriller.

The film is a brutally effective, insanely rousing piece of drama, with enough new wrinkles and ferocious acting to sweep you into its clutches.

The movie is more interested in making viewers consider its disenfranchised protagonists from a fresh perspective. The fact that the film accomplishes this without a trace of gooey sentimentality is a small miracle.

Point Blank is as disposable as a feature-length episode of TV's 24: The movie is all adrenaline and excitement, and it doesn't really stay with you. Just try to tear your eyes away while you're watching it, though.

The film is just a procession of increasingly grim and ugly scenarios and discoveries, capped off by a wildly frustrating ending.

You know this supposedly risqué comedy is in trouble when the funniest gag involves a foot cramp during sex.

Chasing Madoff is as much a journalistic exposé of Madoff as it is a love letter to Markopolos, shot in the style of "Natural Born Killers" by a director terrified of boring his audience. In Proserman, the documentary genre finds its own Michael Bay.

One of the first things that strikes you about these courageous people, who constantly confront volatile, gun-carrying thugs, is that they outgrew their violent pasts and now live contented lives with their families.

The talented actors are game, but they are done in by the shallow nature of their characters, none of whom behaves in a manner remotely resembling real life (they don't really seem to be related, either).

A big part of the problem comes in the casting. Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes - the kind of odd pairing of actors that comes only after your first and second choices have passed - are unconvincing and curiously unsympathetic as the architect Alex and his girlfriend.

Momoa, a familiar face from "Game of Thrones" to "Baywatch," has the muscles but not the imposing persona and barbaric presence that Conan requires.

There's an irrelevance to the movie that the filmmakers, hard as they try, can't quite shake - something awfully square about the picture: It would have played a lot better a decade ago.

Slight and not exactly memorable, but it moves quickly and has some surprising twists and top-notch performances all around.

James Franco looks more bored and distracted in Rise of the Planet of the Apes than he did when he was hosting the Oscars: Watching the movie, I kept waiting for him to pull out his iPhone, aim it at the camera and take a snapshot while mugging sheepishly. Has there ever been a film with a less engaged protagonist?

Every summer movie season usually has at least one spectacular, disastrous flame-out, and although the dog days of August still loom, I doubt there will come a big-budget blockbuster worse than Cowboys and Aliens.

Unlike most films about the Holocaust, which has provided artists with an infinite array of heartrending stories and tragedies, Sarah's Key doesn't spend much time recounting the horrors that Jews suffered during World War II.

The movie wants to be an exploration of family ties and the various ways in which the people we love respond in times of crisis, but the drama is unconvincing, the characters are ill-defined, and Fischer, so good on The Office, seems a bit incomplete without Jim at her side.

The movie is pleasant overall and occasionally comes up with a big laugh. When the movie's over, though, it evaporates from memory, just like a one-night stand that didn't go nearly as well as you'd hoped.