Richard Corliss

An agreeable time-waster for the onlookers and its star. The Rum Diary isn't a corrective to Johnny Depp's kid-centric career, more like a vacation from it, in a resort where the visitors are strange, the natives are restless and the flow of alcohol endless.

The filmmakers throw in a few cheesy scares: mom in a monster mask, a baby sitter jumping in front of a camera. But the rest is pretty freaking cool.

Applying Dad's directorial style of sweaty closeups, prowling telephoto shots and an ominous electronic score (by ex-Tindersticks member Dickon Hinchliffe), the younger Mann has dished out a meaty drama with familiar ingredients from the Law & Order kitchen but a distinctively bitter taste.

There's no reason Banderas, after two Hollywood decades, couldn't do Robert justice; yet for a man whose mourning has turned to madness, he is strangely remote, lifeless, displaying neither rage nor poignancy. If Anaya is the heart at the center of the film, Banderas is the hole.

Brewer must have convinced himself that a schlocky old movie would speak eloquently to today's teens. About half of the time, he pulls it off.

The director is going through the motions, and he doesn't display the cinematic skill, at least in the release version, to bring off an exercise in either Hitchcockian or Shyamalanian suspense.

All these roles could have been found at a garage sale of comedy stereotypes. To the extent that 50/50 works, it is because of Gordon-Levitt, one of my favorite actors.

His performance is a canny portrait of leadership - part genius, part crazy guts, part dumb luck - and worthy of moving Pitt up to the playoff round of Oscar finalists for Best Actor. We'd put money on it.

I'm a notorious softie, and I found things to like about the film, most particularly Clooney's performance; but I remained untouched.

The Ides of March says that American politics, no less than Italian, is a beachfront property with sharks surfing the waves. That makes this skeptical, savory movie a fitting offering from Hollywood's suavest ambassador to Venice and the world.

For a good hour, a very good first hour, the film efficiently accumulates small, terrifying incidents and images.

The movie is not just spectacle; it's got a tender, ultimately tragic love story and enough deadly political scheming to fill a Gaddafi playbook. Indeed, in its narrative cunning, luscious production design and martial-arts balletics, Detective Dee is up there with the first great kung-fu art film, King Hu's 1969 "A Touch of Zen." We'd call it "Crouching Tiger, Freakin' Masterpiece."

The Debt is a little too gray and stolid - by which we may simply mean too true to its complex milieu - to qualify as scintillating entertainment. But at the end of a summer in which anything like reality was banned from movie houses, this gnarly political thriller has a tonic effect

As director, Farmiga is a strong believer in cinematic democracy, allowing the other actors to seize the center of the action and the frame.

The problem is that this pot of intrigue takes ages to boil, and the cook refuses to turn up the heat. And if vitality is not an element Sayles cherishes, neither is nuance.

A gaudily ornamented medieval banquet table groaning with junk food and open entrails.

The film also serves as the clearest statement of Glee's sacred mission. Through it, we can see how the entire multimedia phenomenon - the show, the albums, the iTunes hits, the recent concert tour and now this movie - has accrued the odor, say the incense, of a secular religion.

For a soul-sucking 83 minutes, you're trapped inside the film's tiny, ugly mind.

Matthews brings to The Interrupters what every terrific documentary needs: an out-of-nowhere personality with the same magnetic watchability as any Hollywood star.

As both a simian simile and a wonder of technology, Rise of the Planet of the Apes deserves to be in the company of the great original "Kong." This year's sixth "origins" story of a fantasy franchise (after The Green Hornet, Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger) is also the year's finest action movie.

Gradually, though, the movie sinks into ordinariness, serving up too many Spielbergian reaction shots of each cast member gawking or gulping at an alien encounter, and too many moral lessons that must be learned or taught.

On its own, Captain America is a modestly engaging little-big movie in the median range: well below the first "Iron Man," somewhat above "X-Men: First Class."

Plays like a vacation at a seedy seaside resort. The issue at hand - whether McKinney engaged in criminal behavior with Anderson - is of little moment; what's important is the personality of the lady in question.

It is indeed impressive; and we mean not just this solid, satisfying final film - in which the Potter saga reaches its climax, if not quite its emotional apex - but the entirety of producer David Heyman's blockbuster franchise.

It's all mildly deplorable and instantly forgettable. Kevin James remains a potentially appealing movie star - if only he didn't have to be in Kevin James movies.

The scorekeepers at the various sites that rate critics' enthusiasm for a film shouldn't even try to elicit a Pass or Fail grade from me on T3. I'm a fascinated, stupefied outsider. Just mark me Present.

Apart from some spiffy visual effects, which create coherent, scary textures and architecture for outer space, Green Lantern is the most generic of summer time wasters.

The Trip may have familiar elements - it's pretty much "My Dinner With Andre" pinned to the plot of Alexander Payne's "Sideways" - but the badinage provides an immediate and lasting kick, as well as the spectacle of two champion combatants at the top of their game.