Rene Rodriguez

Coogler occasionally overplays his hand: The scene in which Oscar says goodbye to his daughter for what we know will be the last time is prolonged to the point of overkill.

The coming-of-age tale The Way, Way Back is sweet, heartfelt and utterly trite and predictable from beginning to end.

The times have caught up with Almodóvar, who is now 63: He thinks he’s still pushing the envelope, but he comes off as old-fashioned and outdated.

The movie contains little in terms of traditional action, and Refn never uses it in a rousing or exciting manner, either. That would break the nightmarish spell this strange, beautiful film casts on the viewer. A mother’s love has never been this ruinous.

An uncommonly intense and frightening experience, The Conjuring is the first genuinely scary release in ages by a major studio that features practically no violence and spills only a bit of blood.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a kid playing with his toys and smashing action figures together, except del Toro does it with more grace and imagination than most. There are long sequences in this movie that merit that most overused of terms, “awesome.”

There’s a rollicking Wild West adventure buried deep inside The Lone Ranger, a bloated, mega-budget revival of the story of the iconic gunslinger and his Native American sidekick Tonto.

The movie has a profound understanding of the back-and-forth nature of the bond between boys, and it ends on a silent note of forgiving looks and instant reconciliation that is the privilege of the young, whose lives aren’t yet complicated enough to put resentment before friendship

Monsters University feels half-hearted and lazy, like they weren’t even trying. At least show a little effort, guys.

Although there are some initial feints at using zombies as a metaphor for third-world issues and cultural differences, the picture forgets all that stuff by the final reel. World War Z opens with an undeniable bang. But if this is the way the world ends, we’re going out with a whimper.

What went wrong with Man of Steel? The early teasers promised Terrence Malick. The finished film is more Michael Bay.

This Is the End is a marvelously sustained, high-wire goof – a movie so nutty and daring, so crazy and out-there, that it feels like a low-budget independent except with big stars and a sizable budget.

The film is far from a downer. If anything, more than any of the films in the trilogy, this one may be the most hopeful - and the most affecting.

The Purge isn’t just stupid; it’s also pretentious and often makes no sense.

The picture is perfectly watchable but rarely compelling, because the filmmakers are too timid to take any chances.

There’s nothing more to this movie than the set-up. Even though Cypher is slowly bleeding to death, and Kitai is running out of oxygen capsules that allow him to breathe in the toxic air, there’s no sense of urgency, either. At least Shyamalan, sensing the thinness of the material, doesn’t stretch things out.

Playful, effervescent comedy.

There’s exactly one good scene in all of The Hangover Part III, a hilarious bit of business halfway during the end credits that reminds you what made the original film so good.

At Any Price teaches you a lot about the business of corn seeds and genetic manipulation (the stuff is actually fascinating) but what interests director Ramin Bahrani most are the dynamics of this deeply dysfunctional family.

The directors complied and made some trims, which helps explain why the film works better as a thrilling but superficial celebration of two incredible athletes instead of a personal portrait of two world-famous women who continue to make sports history.

The movie fares less well when the plot and Simon’s neuroses come to the surface, but there is some tremendous suspense in the movie’s final scene.

Star Trek Into Darkness gives you an exhilarating, tingle-inducing rush — that rare feeling that comes when a gigantic entertainment is firing on all fronts, exceeding your expectations.

In the House seems to be building toward a cathartic and unexpected finale. Instead, you get a baffling fizzle — an inexcusably limp and unimaginative conclusion that doesn’t bring a single plot strand to a satisfying end.

The movie is intentionally elusive, like a memory you can’t quite fully recall, but the result has all the depth and weight of a greeting card.

Marvel Studios will only be able to draw from this well only so many times, though, before fatigue sets in.

You come away from Mud fondly remembering those two boys, especially Ellis, who has taken his first steps toward adulthood and discovers it suits him just fine.

This is easily Bay’s best movie, the work of a filmmaker with a cracked sense of humor that he is able to share with the audience.

For its first hour or so, Oblivion is a visually mesmerizing, intriguing picture that doesn’t feel like the same-old: It engages your eyes and piques your curiosity. Then, gradually, the novelty wears off, the clichés start to pile up and we’re back to Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia 101.

Blancanieves is funny, inventive and daring enough to change the story’s ending, going out on a note of bittersweet, unexpected melancholy.

While the scope of the movie is bigger, its impact is smaller. "Blue Valentine" was a precise, heartrending portrait of a marriage coming apart at the seams. The theme of his new movie is a lot harder to discern.

Ascher treats all these insane theories seriously, but that doesn’t mean you have to.

Evil Dead is just a well-made gross-out, and it's kind of a bummer.

No is an exploration of the power of the media to manipulate hearts and minds. The moral of the story: Always go positive.

The movie is wild, but not in the ways that you expect, and it’s also surprisingly chaste — you think you see a lot more than you actually do.

Despite its astronomical body count, John Dies at the End never takes itself seriously, and neither should you.

Oz the Great and Powerful is an oppressive, bloated bore.

The movie leaves you feeling angry and frustrated anyway. And justice for all? Hardly.

Time to give the shoot-’em-up thing a rest, guys: It’s tired and played out, and so are you.

The main thing to keep in mind while watching Steven Soderbergh’s thriller Side Effects is not to take the movie too seriously or else you’ll feel betrayed by the end.

An unsalvageable wreck.

An excruciating and melodramatic comedy.

Bullet in the Head is a throwback to the past with its eyes trained on the present, and it proves Hill has kept up with the times.

This is the sort of small, intimate drama about unpleasant subject matter Hollywood rarely deals with, but Haneke isn't worried about turning off his audience, because death is something everyone has in common. It fascinates us, the way it also scares us.

Maya is as consumed with finding bin Laden as Jake Gyllenhaal was obsessed with finding a serial killer in "Zodiac," only he was doing it as a hobby.

Django Unchained is the most brutal film Quentin Tarantino has ever made. Unlike "Kill Bill" or "Inglourious Basterds," where the violence was thrilling and carried a visceral kick, the carnage here is often ugly and difficult to watch.

Reacher is so good at everything he does, and Cruise plays him in such a robotic manner, that the movie becomes a bit of a bore: The hero is practically omnipotent.

There will be opportunities to see the picture in regular 24 frames per second, but I recommend going the whole hog and sampling what Jackson has come up with - a new way to watch movies and a new take on a universe that seemed to have exhausted its narrative possibilities.

Hitchcock spends too much time off the set of Psycho, where the real story was, and focuses instead on incidental matters that feel like outtakes. Mother would not have been pleased.

There isn't a moment in the entire picture in which you will recognize an element of your own life.

Holy Motors is wild and unfettered and playful - the work of an artist who carries his love of cinema in his bones, and knows how to share that affection with the audience.

This Must Be the Place is as emotionally zonked-out as its protagonist, and just as difficult to warm up to.

This is writer-director David O. Russell's idea of a romantic comedy, and it's terrific - one of the freshest, funniest, most elevating crowd-pleasers of the year.

The House I Live In is a work of journalism, not propaganda: Jarecki has done his research and leaves it to you to decide what to make of it.

Mendes' approach to action is classical and elegant - no manic editing and blurry unintelligible images here - but what makes the movie truly special is the attention he gives his actors.

This is a gorgeous, flashy, widescreen epic, like "Boogie Nights" or "Casino," about the most essential things in life: Family, friends and love. But most of all, love.

Wreck-It-Ralph is a gorgeously rendered story that will play just as well to children as to their parents, albeit for different reasons. Playstation and Xbox junkies will be equally pleased.

Hunt gives this funny, touching movie its soul, and the actors elevate the material into something more resonant and memorable than the story promises.

If you're interested in the sheer craft of filmmaking, Cloud Atlas is required viewing - a rare example of a movie getting by entirely on technique and creative bravado.

Madrid, 1987 operates on a dizzying number of levels - as a romantic comedy, a sex farce, a study of culture clash, ageism and idealism - and the highest compliment you can give this ridiculously talky movie (which plays better if you speak Spanish) is that you're a little sad to see the characters go on their way once they part, probably forever.

Director James Ponsoldt, who co-wrote the script with Susan Burke (inspired in part by her own experiences), opts for realism and modesty instead of sensation.

Writer-director Stephane Robelin's frothy comedy is much more "Golden Girls" hijinks than "On Golden Pond."

Despite all the freaky business on display - and there are moments here when you cannot believe your eyes - The Paperboy suffocates you with boredom like a hot, wet blanket. You want to push it away and escape. It makes sleaze boring.

This is a talky picture, based on a historical incident where the outcome is already known – yet it still proves much more engrossing than crime dramas or bank robberies.

For a good hour, Seven Psychopaths is lively, bloody fun. Then the yawning starts.

The film also plays to the strengths of the found-footage format, proving that sometimes the scariest things are the ones you can barely see. For horror hounds, this is required viewing.

This is an exciting, exceptionally well-made futuristic thriller that also happens to be loaded with lived-in touches and punchy ideas.

Reveals yet another facet of this always-unpredictable filmmaker: a flair for compassionate, humane melodrama.

The movie even fails on a psychological level, never illustrating how, in a pressure-cooker environment and swept up by mob-think mentality, we are capable of committing acts that innately repel us.

Achingly beautiful and visually transfixing, Samsara offers a transporting vacation from the usual multiplex fare. It's a movie to get lost in.

The Master has become a contest between two gifted actors trying to shout each other down. The commitment to their roles is impressive, but it's tethered to a weightless, airless movie, a film so enamored of itself, the audience gets shut out.

On one level, Searching for Sugar Man is a testament to how music - or painting or literature or any form of art - can take on a life far greater than its creator intended when it happens to connect with the right people at the right time.

The most fascinating aspect of The Imposter, though, is why the missing boy's family believed his story.

Even at his worst - and Robert does some awful things - the actor almost makes you root for him, hoping he'll get away with it.

There are several cameos in For a Good Time, Call… by famous actors portraying the girls' phone-sex clients, including Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen, but they've been clearly been left to improvise, and they don't put much effort into their routines.

Even the story-within-a-story structure doesn't pay off. This material needed more substance and ideas - and less flash and sumptuous production values.

You end up feeling sorry for all the actors forced to humiliate themselves, except for McConaughey, whose portrayal of sadistic, manipulative evil is mesmerizing, in part because it was so unexpected. He continues to surprise. Friedkin, sadly, continues to coast.

Cosmopolis may be a cerebral mood piece, but it is loaded with strong performances that connect on an emotional level.

The best moments in director David Koepp's slight, dull movie are the scenes in which bike messenger Wilee pauses at busy intersections to figure out the path of least obstruction.

Everyone in Hit and Run is clearly having a good time. It's the audience that gets left out of the fun.

The film's earnestness makes up for its high corn factor.

The best artists - the ones whose work endures and matters and changes the world - are often troublemakers who challenge the status quo. Out of their defiance comes art. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, director Alison Klayman's riveting documentary of the esteemed Chinese sculptor/painter/iconoclast, is practically a handbook on social rebellion.

None of this is all that engaging. But the art design of the movie makes up for the slack story.

Chuck Norris is also in this movie, although you should know that he gets roughly five minutes of screen time, half of those devoted to his telling of a Chuck Norris joke. That is as funny as the movie's self-aware humor gets.

The best stuff comes early in Ruby Sparks, which was written by Kazan (granddaughter of Elia) and directed by the husband and wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine).

There's a streak of compassion in Dark Horse, a sincere empathy for a thoroughly detestable man, that is as surprising as anything in Solondz's earlier, more transgressive work.

The movie is oddly impersonal - you remember the concept more than the story - and feels like something that was made simply for the opportunity to pair Streep and Jones for the first time.

It looks fantastic, but it's also hard to sit through, because by that point The Bourne Legacy has repeatedly proven there are no surprises to be had here, no more fresh stories to be mined from this well. The stunts look exhausting, though. No wonder Damon bailed.

This is ultimately a movie about highly intelligent people in pursuit of trivial nonsense: At least Mulder and Scully caught a real monster every once in a while.

By the end, the movie has pulled off a small miracle: You become absorbed in the lives of these people for who they are and not what they own.

As it winds down to its quiet, haunting finale, Oslo, August 31st illustrates how all of us, even the most damaged and broken people, have a purpose to fulfill.

It's a beautiful, strange tone poem about childhood and innocence, set in a strange but still recognizable world where the polar ice caps are melting, crayfish shacks float down rivers and enormous aurochs, an extinct breed of bison, are sloughing their way toward our tiny, adorable narrator.

This is not the sort of movie you can just leave behind in the theater. And like any true finale to a trilogy, the picture doesn't work nearly as well if you haven't seen the previous two installments: It's not designed to stand alone, and it pays off all that has come before with an exuberant, thrilling high.

To Rome with Love is so inviting, and most of its gaggle of characters so diverse and likable, it's doubly disappointing that Allen, who wrote and directed the movie, can't think of what to do with them.

Aggressively, defiantly stupid.

Part of the reason The Amazing Spider-Man feels so fresh and invigorating is that its story is so simple - anyone remember exactly what the deal was with Loki and that cube? - and its protagonist so relatable.

Ted is more of an idea than a movie, a string of jokes and homages starring a cartoon and some game actors whose performances are destined to be enjoyed in chunks, rarely from start to finish, during momentary breaks of channel surfing on late-night TV.

An irritatingly contrived drama.

As Seeking a Friend for the End of the World crawls toward its sentimental finale, you're rooting for that asteroid to get here, quick.

The film is precious and adorable, but it isn't naïve, and the movie breathes so deep that Anderson even gets a real performance out of Willis (this is his best work in years).

Brave has a manic, almost daffy energy and sense of humor.

Enormous in its scope and colossal in its stupidity.

That's My Boy more than lives up to its R-rating - including one gross-out gag repulsive enough to make you put down your popcorn.

This is a quiet, powerful film about the lengths we'll go to for the sake of the people we love - and the depths we'll sink to for the sake of the ones we hate.

Hysteria never gets too preachy or ponderous, and there's something in the film to educate even the most learned viewer.

The whole of Prometheus - which was written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, and rips off everything from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "Event Horizon" - feels derivative and passé: The film is a shiny, high-tech relic.

By film's end, we're deep into Coen brothers territory, with an extra splash of Sam Raimi-level gore.

In Snow White and the Huntsman, this talented but woefully miscast actress (Stewart) is expected to rally an entire army of soldiers, even though she usually looks like she forgot the combination to her locker.

The question of why the law must always be upheld, regardless of consequences, gives this light, amiable movie a surprising heft and weight. You don't want to see Bernie sent to prison - the world is a better place without that mean old shrew - but murder is murder, right?

Men in Black 3 is so dull and empty, it's the first movie that has ever made me think "Thank God this is in 3D."

Seydoux says that when the film was completed and released shortly after the end of the war, it became a symbol of freedom.

Battleship is a board game for children, so it stands to reason a film adaptation would also be aimed at kids. But did they have to gear it to really dumb kids?

The latest collaboration between Cohen and director Larry Charles proves the formula they created with "Borat" and then started to milk dry with "Brüno" has finally run out of juice. Time to move on, guys.

The movie has an undeniable visceral power. It is also a loud, grating wallow in dime-store despair, a cheap and hollow button-puncher.

Depp and Burton are two gifted, like-minded artists whose affinity for oddball characters and humor makes them natural creative partners. But they also enable each other's laziest, most indulgent habits: Too often, they seem to be making movies to entertain themselves instead of the audience.

The Avengers has a knockout final 30 minutes, all gee-whiz crash and bang and eye candy that makes grand use of 3D and IMAX and all the other toys. But the Transformers movies did that, too.

The performances are all terrific - Stillman gets his actors to latch onto his absurdist vibe, then gives them wonderfully rich dialogue to play with.

For a good hour or so, The Raven is gruesome, ludicrous fun. Then it's just ludicrous.

You also see a man, flawed and imperfect, finding his way through with his music, constantly searching for his place in the world.

One of the scariest films I've seen in ages, although I cannot in all honesty explain exactly what the movie is about.

Monsieur Lazhar doesn't send you home depressed. Instead, the film leaves you hopeful, and even exhilarated, that even the most painful wounds can sometimes heal.

The actors, many of them now in their mid-30s, look understandably fuller in the face and thicker around the waist. The jokes, too, are starting to show their age: They wobble.

Musical Chairs is about overcoming impossible odds and never giving up and chasing your dreams – all that afterschool-special stuff - but it's also charming and upbeat, and it's stuffed with great, vibrant, insanely catchy music. No Bee Gees, though.

The Hunger Games takes no risks.

As usual for the Dardennes, the plot is slight but loaded with hairpin turns of tremendous emotional power.

An intoxicating, world-class collaboration between a filmmaker (Spain's Fernando Trueba), two artists (designer Javier Mariscal and animator Tono Errando) and a musician (Cuban pianist/bandleader Bebo Valdés).

A surprisingly sappy misfire from brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, a hug-it-out, touchy-feely movie that succumbs to the maudlin sentimentality they had avoided in all their previous pictures (The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Cyrus).

The fact that the entire film is in Spanish, and Ferrell plays a Mexican named Armando, are two of the tamest elements in the movie.

This is the rare breed of Hollywood studio production that has the brash spirit of an independent picture and the sharp wit of a stand-up comic.

Eventually, though, Seeking Justice devolves into the usual business of chases and elaborate double-crosses that leave behind all vestiges of realism for the sake of popcorn thrills.

"The silence will kill you!" warn the posters for Silent House. That's only if the boredom doesn't get you first, though.

The movie also glows bright with life and hope, celebrating the innate human instinct to push onward and persevere, even in the face of incomprehensible evil.

This is the kind of colossally misguided vanity project.

Tilda Swinton is the star of We Need to Talk About Kevin, and her performance is so complex and volcanic and transfixing that all of the film's flaws melt away.

Project X is an astounding, superlative movie about adolescence - a brutal, unapologetic comedy about the fantasy every high school kid carries around in his head about being popular and cool and beloved.

I haven't watched "Fargo" in a few years, but I still remember almost every scene. I saw Thin Ice two nights ago and cannot in all honesty tell you how it ends.

The action, which bookends the movie, is atrocious, defying all laws of gravity and physics and machine gun-edited into incomprehensible lunacy.

Big Miracle even throws in an unexpected bonus, a surprise last-minute cameo that is funny without being the slightest bit mean, just like the rest of this hugely likable movie.

The movie has such a profound and compassionate understanding of human behavior, family ties and the way ordinary people respond when they're forced into a moral quandary, I can't imagine anyone not being transfixed by it.

In his first starring role post-Harry Potter, Radcliffe must carry the movie with little dialogue and practically nothing to play other than fear, constantly reacting to creepy toys that suddenly spring to life and reflections in windows that shriek unexpectedly at him.

Man on a Ledge just made me think of an old Van Halen song: Jump.

Neeson is always compelling, even in a movie as ridiculous as The Grey.

Like a lot of anime, the movie remains entertaining even when you have no idea what's going on.

You need lots of gifted people chasing after the same bad idea to make a movie as colossally misguided as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Steven Soderbergh has been telling interviewers that he's planning to take a sabbatical from filmmaking because he has lost his inspiration. His lack of interest is palpable in Haywire, a rote exercise in action filmmaking that is sleek and polished and instantly evaporates from memory.

The entire point of Carnage is to poke fun at the fragile civility of the upper-middle class - they're all animals inside! - but how much more fun would this material have been if the story hadn't been about polite white people?

There's a frothy, almost whimsical undercurrent quietly bubbling beneath the dead-serious story, and it finally bursts to the forefront in the ridiculously happy finale, which argues without the slightest bit of shame that crime sometimes does pay - really, really well.

There isn't a moment in the movie where you don't feel Spielberg's passion, and this time, the film is worthy of his enthusiasm. It's a knockout.

We Bought a Zoo is the most formulaic movie Cameron Crowe has ever made: It is so generic, you could review it with a flow chart.

The relentless pace is a big part of the fun. Who ever heard of a slow rollercoaster, anyway? You'll have to ride this one in the theater, though. It simply won't be the same at home.

Chemistry is one of the few things left filmmakers can't fake with CGI, and the dynamic between Craig and Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is so sensational, it instantly propels the movie beyond glossy, high-toned pulp into something far more affecting.

Shame is fearless in the way the most ambitious art often is, and to write it off for what it doesn't do is reductive and misguided. You don't just watch Shame: You feel it, too.

The wait for a great action movie is finally over. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is pure popcorn of the highest, most flavorful order, and it's good for you, too.

A fat streak of melancholy courses throughout Young Adult - who would have guessed the sight of a Kentaco Hut, one of those one-stop conglomerations of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, could be this depressing?

This odious, hypocritical movie marks director David Gordon Green's graduation into full-on hack.

Propulsive, hyper-violent and ridiculously exciting, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within can be described as "The Wire" transplanted to Rio de Janeiro.

The overriding point of Into the Abyss, what keeps this sad, sorrowful film from becoming depressing and elevates it far above the usual chatter of liberal-conservative debate, is that there can be light on the other end of even the darkest of tunnels.

All of Payne's films have been driven by the anger and frustration of his protagonists, but The Descendants is the first one in which sadness lurks behind every frame.

The movie fails utterly at coming up with a story that merits all the eye candy.

As much of a personal Scorsese picture as "Raging Bull" or "Taxi Driver." In some ways, this could be his most heartfelt movie.

The Muppets may have been born out of a desire to revive a dormant franchise that was once a cash cow, but there isn't a single beat in the film that feels crass or opportunistic. This one is from the heart.

Leave it to von Trier to conceive an intergalactic sci-fi metaphor for a psychological disorder – and then make it work so astonishingly well.

Part 1 does something that no other previous Twilight movie had achieved: This one draws you close and keeps you there.

A brazen stunt that pays off. Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, simultaneously channeling "Singin' in the Rain" and "A Star is Born," tells a story about 1920s Hollywood made in the style of that era.

Jack and Jill contains long stretches of squirm-inducing tedium in which Sandler riffs and ad-libs far longer than he should.

This is Eastwood's "Brokeback Mountain," chased by a healthy serving of "J.F.K."- style paranoia and conspiracies (Oliver Stone is going to love this movie.) But because so much of what the film says about Hoover remains speculative and unproven, J. Edgar can't fully cross all its Ts.

Margin Call doesn't demonize its characters, nor does it absolve them of their sins. The movie simply shows, without judgment or anger, how our economic crisis came to be.

Still, this is one French comedy that could have used a little more hand wringing and a little less whimsy.

The best thing about this mildly diverting but instantly forgettable comedy is that it seems to have awakened something in Murphy that had laid dormant for much of the past two decades.

By the end of the movie, when all your questions have been answered, you're left with the exhilarating high of having been manipulated by a gifted artist in a diabolically dark mood.

Even a supporting turn by Vincent Cassell as Otto Gross, a fellow psychiatrist, cocaine addict and unapologetic adulterer, fails to enliven the movie: A Dangerous Method makes even a cokehead hedonist boring.

The movie - which caused walkouts and an uproar at Sundance - rewards your endurance with an utterly insane 30-minute climax of violence, audacious gore and all-around bad behavior (how this picture got an R rating is baffling).

Take Shelter is paced slowly and deliberately, which is necessary to make believable whatever is tormenting Curtis.

If you can overlook the lack of logic inherent in its central conceit, In Time makes for a fun, stylish piece of speculative sci-fi.

Like Roman Polanski's "Repulsion," Martha Marcy May Marlene gradually places us inside the mind of a woman who just might be insane, and in its audacious, terrifying final scene, the movie traps us there in perpetuity, refusing to provide the viewer with a way out. This time, the horror follows you home - no exit, no escape.

One of the chief pleasures of My Week with Marilyn - which should not be approached as anything other than fluffy entertainment - is watching Williams bring to life Monroe's inner demons and her movie-star allure with equal aplomb. By the time the film's book-ending closing musical number comes around (That Old Black Magic), the illusion is astounding and complete.

There is absolutely nothing in this prequel/remake that improves on the first film or negates it in any way. If you've never seen The Thing - and you really should - stick with the genuine 1982 article and skip this elaborate act of mimicry.

Depending on your age, Limelight could make you nostalgic for those bad old days - and sort of glad you'll never be able to relive them.

Circumstance, the story of the budding romance between two high school girls, is unlike any adolescent love story you've ever seen: This one takes place in Tehran.

Why does The Big Year's trailer intentionally hide what the film is really about? Here's why: Because bird-watching - or birding, as practitioners prefer to call it - makes for a stupefyingly boring movie.

The result is that rare breed of big-studio pictures: A remake that makes sense.

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.

Evans – always a reliably dynamic and vivacious screen presence – can't do much to bring the character to life. As far as superheroes go, Cap remains a bit of a stiff.

And so the saga of Harry Potter comes to an end - not with a whimper but with a rousing thunderclap of incident, emotion, suspense and old-fashioned movie magic.

Aside from its period New Zealand setting, there is little to distinguish Bride Flight from something you might watch briefly on Lifetime, then change the channel.

The movie is slick and entertaining, but much of it is as superficial as a Twitter post.

A continuous parade of slaughter.

The film seems simple and facile at a glance, but these characters and their dilemmas stay with you. These days, any of us could suddenly be Larry Crowne.

Oh, what a hollow experience Dark of the Moon is! Bay is so afraid of boring his audience, he pitches every scene at the same high volume right from the first shot, and the effect is exhausting.

The main problem with Submarine is that Oliver is not a likable protagonist.

The movie plays out as a series of memories, so exact and evocative that watching it becomes an immersive experience.

The tone is all over the place, which makes the movie difficult to take neither seriously nor as popcorn fluff.

The actors are talented enough to carry the movie, but they fade into the background once things grow dire, and the special effects take over. There's no sense of wonder or awe.

Midnight in Paris initially seems like a departure for Allen, but the prevailing theme blends right in with the rest of his canon.

An uncommonly polished and sophisticated superhero movie.

To call Meek's Cutoff slow doesn't begin to describe its pace. There are stretches that are, frankly, boring. But the vivid details and intimacy you develop with these travelers sticks with you.

A severe bout of sequelitis afflicts this eagerly awaited but only sporadically amusing follow-up.

The movie, engrossing as it is intentionally horrifying, is capped by a last-minute revelation that brings the story to a haunting, powerful close.

A savage, insane movie - in the best way possible.

Even the most forgiving moviegoer will recognize this movie as the blatant cash-grab that it is.

By the time Ceremony reaches its admittedly clever finale, you're too wrung out from Angarano's tiresome antics and Winkler's unconvincing dialogue to care who ends up marrying whom.

I respected The Beaver for having the conviction to treat mental illness seriously and without compromise. But did it have to be so maudlin, too?

Proving girls can get just as down and dirty as boys, the wedding comedy Bridesmaids contains some uproarious moments of gross-out humor.

The movie is at its best when Spurlock dives deep into his subject, interviewing directors such as J.J. Abrams and Quentin Tarantino.

There is nothing in this surprisingly funny, exciting film that feels like homework, and Branagh even dares to end the film on, if not quite a cliffhanger, then a daring "To Be Continued" note.

Shows us a man who not only derives great pleasure from devoting himself to his job but also, in the process, has helped shaped the greatest city in the world.

Director Pablo Trapero ( Lion's Den), like so many contemporary Argentine filmmakers, reserves the bulk of his wrath for a country whose authorities and judicial systems have been so grossly corrupt there appears to be no way of correcting them.

The Conspirator hits a new nadir for Redford: Sitting through this stage-bound, talky, stiffly-acted movie reminded me of having to endure the Hall of Presidents attraction at Walt Disney World (one of the few existing bits of proof that Disney had a dark and evil side).

Director Kim Jee-woon's astonishing story of a serial killer who picks the wrong man's fiancée to murder, is so extreme and intense that it had to be trimmed down in its native country before it was released to theaters. We lucky westerners get to see it in all its hair-raising, stomach-churning glory, and that's a wonderful thing.

Corben has done an impressive amount of journalistic research that will be of particular interest to South Florida audiences. Every time you think Miami couldn't possibly get any weirder, it does.

The film isn't as concerned with terrifying you as it is with showing you a good time, culminating with an over-the-top climax that is simultaneously utterly ridiculous and enjoyable.

There are moments of heartbreaking beauty in it – although Dolan is still a work in progress. He'll get better – he's immensely talented – but he's not quite there yet.

The film will probably play a lot better in dorm rooms with plenty of beer kegs and bongs on hand, but in the confines of a movie theater, it's deadly - the sort of bad comedy Mel Brooks made late in his career, until he finally smartened up and quit.

Potiche is filled with rat-a-tat dialogue and broadly humorous situations, but Ozon also employs subtle touches.

The script by Ben Ripley doesn't come up with enough obstacles to throw in the hero's path, and his budding romance with the doomed Christina feels more like a studio mandate than an organic development.

With Kaboom, Araki takes a huge step backward from the maturity and restraint he demonstrated in 2004's "Mysterious Skin," his best and most-assured film to date.

A stiff, unconvincing epic.

No, Sucker Punch doesn't make any sense. But none of that matters, because the ride Snyder takes you on is so vividly conceived, so deliriously bizarre and wonderful.

The graphic sex scenes radiate an uncommon heat, and Im can pull off a hugely effective shock when he wants to.

For all its peripatetic energy, Limitless still winds up with the same-old blazing guns and wanton destruction of property. No matter how smart you may be, Hollywood will figure out a way to dumb you down.

British satire loses something when it's handled by Americans: You miss the perspective that a foreign culture brings, so instead of wit and humor, you end up trafficking in self-congratulatory clichés and sentiment.

There's a startling moment 10 or 15 minutes into The Adjustment Bureau - the only time, really, when the film achieves any level of surprise. The dispiriting dullness of this dreary misfire hasn't had time to settle in and thicken: The movie hasn't yet revealed its utter and thorough ineptitude.

Canner is able to keep Orgasm Inc. trained on its eponymous theme with a brisk pace and precise detail that will be equally illuminating to men and women.

This excruciatingly dumb, formulaic picture, which somehow required the work of four screenwriters but contains not even one single, fleeting moment of wit or humor.

Although the picture is nominally the story of a man with a murderous temper, it is less a thriller than a metaphor for the plight of illegal immigrants.

The movie's second half, which grows progressively sadder, also starts to feel a bit repetitive.

Aside from the thin characterizations, The Eagle never manages to convey the importance of the heroes' quest.

A beautifully illustrated love letter to dogs and the people who own them.

The movie is unwieldy and overstuffed with subplots - and, at 2 1/2 hours, probably too much misery and sorrow for most viewers.

The Mechanic remains singularly uninvolving - a rote exercise in a genre with characters so familiar they barely register.

You watch it in stunned disbelief, wondering how a movie that started so strongly devolved into something so absurd.

Its stop-and-start feel keeps you from ever getting fully absorbed in the story.

This is an intentionally fanciful, gossamer movie, extremely personal and heartfelt, influenced in equal parts by Michelangelo Antonioni (although never so elusive) and Gus Van Sant (just not quite so self-conscious).

It makes the predictable journey surprisingly fun and enjoyable.

In Country Strong, the Oscar-winning Paltrow gets upstaged and outacted by the kid from "Tron" and the snotty brat from "Gossip Girl." Who'd have thought?

Absorbing and hugely compelling, a thoughtful portrayal of the myriad ways in which we learn to deal with the unthinkable.

There isn't a moment in the entire film that doesn't feel genuine.

A big, boisterous action-comedy - a funny, exciting and intentionally goofy summer movie that just happens to arrive in the middle of January.

This is more of a poignant, haunting study of well-intentioned but doomed folly, embodied by a heroine whose bravery renders her blind to the world that is crumbling around her.

Casino Jack fails at its most critical mission: Laying out in clear detail exactly how and when Abramoff broke the law.

This is a comedy about imbeciles who fall blindly in love with a concept, without giving any thought to what they are doing. And although some of them eventually have a moment of self-realization, it arrives, sadly, much too late.