Sara Maria Vizcarrondo

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

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 is really a valentine to the fans.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

A visually rough retreading of Superbad territory with a slightly more treacherous journey, The Virginity Hit has a surprisingly softer ethical edge than you'd expect.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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