Sara Maria Vizcarrondo

The song and dance interaction of kids hollering advice during Blue's Clues happens here on the big screen, which is meant to transform the movie into a social event of sorts.

The soulless-ness of their empty plot of track homes and super-store existence invokes both "Poltergeist" and "Employee of the Month."

Premium Rush has a rewarding relentlessness and a payoff that suggests that whirring city that surrounds us in is full of supporters who see past the system.

The shadow of Whitney Houston's stardom and crushing recent death hang heavy over this midrange movie that promises its female audience at least three good cries during its somewhat overlong run time.

ParaNorman is easily one of the most charming, imaginative and quirky comedies to come out of Laika Entertainment (Coraline), but for all its cleverness and urbane wit, it's in no way appropriate for kids.

Killer Joe isn't as outlandish in premise as it is in execution, which is saying something.

The premise is fetching and feels like a mystery, particularly as the film orchestrates its story to make the work of the Alps group seem like a kind of heist.

It's a great (if middle-of-the-road) family comedy to seek out.

He's either daring you not to laugh or daring you not to care, but either way, you'll laugh, care and worry about the consequences in Dark Horse.

A film about how outwardly alienating our circles are (much to the detriment of our careers) and how caustic our supposedly nurturing intimacies can be at the same time.

Though the film is a fairly plastic British period piece with all the intimacy of a Hitachi Wand, the script captures some delicate and intelligent facets of a tensely conflicted era.

A coming of age story in which the children better the world for the adults, Kore-Eda's heart is in the right place.

Still, the fans are lovable no matter how mixed the Comic-Con bag is, and Morgan Spurlock is precisely the doc maker to tell us about it.

While A Thousand Words features some reverent flashes and even has the potential to touch audiences (a moment involving a mother with Alzheimer's particularly hits home), it suffers from being too broad.

The film's biggest (and saddest) crime is malaise - it's not that John Carter doesn't care about what it's doing, it just can't make us care, even though the magnitude of every event, conflict and emotion is as melodramatic as its Victorian roots.

The film's strength isn't its shock tactics - it's the rapid-fire, party montage editing that finds a million natural ways to put mundane actions and moments up against each other for comic effect.

This is one of the super rare docs that packs an unbelievable punch despite its misguided aesthetics. It's a strange triumph of content over form, which is the province of journalists to report.

A dating fantasy for girls and an action bromance for guys, This Means War wins the Valentine date crowd in swoops and strokes, but does it lead to swoons? Not really.

Surrogate fathers and family values are at the foreground, making the film a quick sell to parents - especially as it boasts the added value of literary roots.

So Watching TV is less a story loosely bound by cause and effect than a kind of scrapbook of memories, all of which convey the concerns of being super smart and mostly confused in a culturally mixed Manhattan, circa 1980. The affection is sweet and precise, if even the terms we use to define them aren't.

Repression is one thing, but discontent generally breeds self-knowledge and rich interior lives, two things that are eerily absent here. Regardless, the film features some really intriguing conflicts and solid performances throughout.

Clichés and thin thrillers are what we can expect from January releases and while Man on a Ledge has predictability to spare, it also has something that makes your time spent worthwhile: legitimate suspense.

Such a story is made to be colored in jumbo crayon, and at first you might long for a more nuanced approach, but this film was produced in the 1940's serial style that's made Lucas Films enormous.

The mother/daughter drama should have played a bigger part in this film as the 87-minute runtime passes quickly and leaves us feeling utterly short-changed.

You'll be happier with the film if you don't expect fidelity to source material, but that doesn't mean you'll hate it if you loved Niels Arden Oplev's movie.

With a powerhouse cast that also includes Steve Buscemi, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon and Ice Cube, the carefully crafted and trenchant drama will appeal to more audience members than it will to critics.

Michael Fassbender (Fishtank, Inglourious Basterds) is reliably great, severely outclassing costar Knightley's grating performance.

The pace is solid and engaging without putting you on the edge of your seat-you won't be looking at your watch, which means it's at least worth the time spent.