Sara Maria Vizcarrondo

Sure it's fun - and painful - but it's not thin.

There's more to it than a black-and-white political conclusion, and the laundry list of California documentary heroes in the credits suggests this film is humanist before it's agenda driven.

The Master is big screen marvel intended for 70mm projection (a rare treat), with some beautiful imagery, but often inaudible dialogue. Phoenix's lived-in mumble comes off about as clear as Fenster from The Usual Suspects and Amy Adam's precise diction can't even save her harshest talking points.

With an incredible performance by young Natasha Calls and surprisingly effect direction by Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch) you'll be surprised how this horror gets you just when you think you're safe.

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.

Journalist and director Allison Klayman doesn't mask her awe of the man, who comes off as a cross between a wise Buddha-figure and Santa Claus - he's made for history, and he's making it.

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.

What it provides (instead of the thematically clever dialogue of typically subtle French comedy) is biting wit, poignancy and, forsaking some structural nuisances, the summer's best bromance.

If this horror movie cashes in on the audience that echoes its character's awareness ("That's where the nucular thing happened, right?") then we're about to learn how low our national academic standards are.

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.

You'll laugh and be offended, but if you watch it and don't want to be part of the solution, you'll know which side of the line you're on. Activism takes some unique forms.

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.

It's a mixed blessing to see these dramas play out in Norwegian, surrounded by what we tend to imagine are more liberal perspectives on sex.

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.

A family drama that looks for answers in coincidence (is it really ever coincidence?), this endearing and breezy comic fable watches Jeff's coming of age and promises nothing after his moment of truth.

Jonah Hill is masterful at delivering an absurd story with so much sweetness, the nonsense ceases to get in the way.

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.

The Dish and The Spoon boasts the efficiency and tidiness of early American indies like Rob Nilsson's "Heat and Sunlight," while it relocates its foreign film-like emotional landscapes to more native climes.

It's full of really subtle dichotomies and internal conflicts, but what makes Julius' story seem authentic is how totally incongruous it feels.

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.

Instead of venturing into mournful "Terms of Endearment" territory, the film - and the filmmakers - commit to a relentless determination to live.

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.

The messy uplift audiences can expect from this butterfly awakening they'll get in spades.

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.

OKA!, like the mysterious horn the characters hunt, is a real find.

Trash-action director Paul W.S. Anderson's (Alien vs. Predator) finds no cultural purpose for this rather literal adaptation of the Musketeers, but it's not so horrible it deserved to be protected from the cold eye of film critics.

The mix of groin injury and over-explanation could totally reach 9-year-olds and a greying Atkinson is still relentlessly lovable.

Martha Marcy May Marlene enters so richly into psychological horror it recalls those disturbing dramatizations of Jonestown that were big on TV in the '80s.

It's a trenchant modern western and fans of the genre should embrace it for more reasons than just the presence of the epic Sam Shepard who, by the way, owns this Butch Cassidy.

The real problem is, when the film blindsides us with a mystery we didn't know existed, we're already too busy not caring about mystery we knew was there.

As divisive as his documentary "Kurt and Courtney," this made-for-British-TV doc by Nick Broomfield begins with the promise of neutrality - but it's a promise the film can't keep.

We all have to make jokes around the water cooler, and if enough people bother to see Killer Elite, its silly nonsense could make for a great comedy routine by Greg from IT.

It's never boring but the relentless twists do get a bit tedious.

Upbeat, bitter, sweet and always gripping, Shut Up! Little Man gives remix culture the ucky origin story it likely won't heed, but could sorely use nonetheless.

Surprisingly, George Clooney's direction is somewhat underwhelming with crucial conversations oddly lacking in tension.

Apollo 18 is a drab horror that tries to plant fears about untrustworthy authority (Nixon, NASA, etc) that are as stale as a freeze-dried peas.

Far more charming, quick-witted and high spirited than anyone could have expected...for a film that didn't screen for press. It's gimmicky up the wazoo (not just 3D, but scratch-and-sniff "Aroma-Scope" cards handed out at screenings) and it's all the better for it.

Contrary to all of my bitter nudging, I found both sweet and charming. It's just me: I hate precocious children.

The film is really a valentine to the fans.

A chick flick for do-gooders, The Help suffers from a malady common to the discrimination drama: its treatment of inequality is more condescending than the prejudice it aims to remedy.

A traditional southern gothic, Septien delivers oddities from the perverse to the parochial with a straight face, and in the process restores the oddball genre to what might be called authenticity.

Gripping, offensive and bewildering, Tabloid is a mean-spirited masterpiece.

The laughs are proportionate to the stakes, which are middle-of-the-road.

On the surface Monte Carlo is charming, oddly down-home wish-fulfillment, but it's riddled with unexplored class issues and generic filmmaking.

Formally, everything's in order-it's an attractive film with some ingenious action sequences-but the problems overwhelm the pleasures, leading to the conclusion that this film's trouble is under the hood.

Italian audiences are bound to like it and the broadness of plot and appeal suggests casual fans of foreign film should, too.

Panettiere's performance has the straightforwardness of a jumbo crayon.

David Lowery's St. Nick provides plenty to marvel at.

The beauty of the film and what ultimately makes it more timeless than trenchant, is the way it side-steps the entire issue of Hanna's sex.

This foreign view of the subject is anthropologically useful, however the film's photo animation technique transforms family photos (used extensively to fill in historical plot holes) into something that resembles zombie-resurrection.

The film is a twisty and playful primer that suggests the best thing to do when beset with ugly forces is to publicly laugh them off. What happens in private is your business.

Lovers of Hate would be a family tragedy if the immature antics of the three characters didn't send you ping-ponging from sympathetic chuckles to guffaws of disgust.

Katz, however, is great with gentle moments (his most dear and haunting is the final scene), and he handles the balance of mystery and family drama quite adeptly.

From Prada to Nada might appeal to tweens but word of mouth won't be nearly as strong as Austen's parlor gossip.

It's a wonderfully moving meditation on the capacity of animals to inspire our imaginations and something applicable to educational markets as well as regular documentary audiences.

The Rite might have been more affecting if the performances gave just a hint that its histrionics were more than just that.

The feature directorial debut of Martin Zandvliet, Applause has moments of flourish and moments that reach towards something as pared down as Thea's play.

To say the franchise is coasting along on fumes suggests it once ran on a full tank, which may not even be true for "Meet the Parents," the surprise hit that kicked off this broad comic franchise.

Even the presence of Dan Aykroyd as Yogi and Justin Timberlake as his pint-sized straight man Boo Boo, couldn't save the movie.

Equally nostalgic and fresh-faced, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is a bohemian musical that owes as much to Cassavetes "Shadows" as it does the French musicals of the '30s.

A clearly personal effort, Somewhere demonstrates Coppola's featherweight touch with big subjects like identity and human connection.

Ultimately, the film is made for longevity, like all the best Disney titles are. However, it's also a ready-made Broadway show, with numbers, dialogue and even drama-club histrionics all pre-packaged for immediate adaptation to stage.

This rags-to-sequins tale may be schmaltzy in its sincerity, but 'tis the season. Glitter is optional, but certainly encouraged.

A small film about enormous fears.

This oddball tale of life on a snowy mountainside is consistently upbeat and surprising, with action intensity that stays sturdily at "Goonies" level.

The film knows the aesthetic of enlightenment, the filmmakers demonstrate adoration for their subject, but whether or not the film grasps the principle further is very arguable.

In sum, the film is not without its sweetness. Carell's Barry retells the story of his life in dioramas populated completely with costumed, stuffed mice.

It's scary fun and packed with comic bits that skate between sad and absurd like the best of reality TV.

An uplifting, high energy documentary.

Directorially, the film takes a few too many trips into prosaic slow motion.