Scott Bowles

This comedy deserves credit for taking a decided viewpoint — and delivering a heartfelt if occasionally misguided message.

It's an apt title. As divisive as the issue has become, it's hard to deny the power of Guggenheim's lingering shots on these children, waiting on a superhero who isn't going to come.

Let Me In is going to lure and please fans of the original; like the first, the remake is graphically violent but as tense as good horror gets.

A Dangerous Method has plenty to say about sex, but it lacks much fire for it.

A clunky-if-earnest comedy about a literal band of misfits led by a singer who never takes off his mascot-size headgear. Ever.

Pooh succeeds by embracing much of what modern films (including Potter's) have largely forgotten: old-fashioned movie pleasures.

Despite an abrupt ending and the worst title of the year, Arbitrage manages to leverage real tension from its veteran stars in one of Hollywood's first pedigreed films of the fall.

Unapologetically brutal and unencumbered by much plot, Raid is the year's most turbo-charged film.

An historical opus that is equal parts ballet and biography, though the second component pales in comparison with the first.

July is solid throwback storytelling, a crime yarn that may not blow you away but can cut to the bone.

Leave it to a wimpy kid to show Hollywood how to make a family movie with live people in it.

Had Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch made a movie together, it might have looked something like The Signal.

And that's Fed Up's ultimate, if not fatal, weakness: The movie seems to acquit consumers of any culpability in our health crisis.

Scott paces the film like its mechanized star: deliberately and, ultimately, with enough speed to keep its passengers satisfied.

Crisply shot and voiced by a legion of Brits, the animated Arthur seems aimed at the Scrooge and caroler in all of us.

It's simple stuff, but the movie's heart is in the right place.

The action is brisk, the acting is solid, and barring an unlikely failure at the box office, a franchise is born. Let the games begin.

A slow-cooked film that's one of the most heartwarming of the young year.

While not as revelatory as Al Gore's 2006 Oscar-winning documentary, Inequality makes a resounding case that the middle class is facing its own planetary crisis: becoming an endangered species.

One of the coldest action films in years and an odd showcase for Saoirse Ronan, a deft actress who is one of the few youngsters capable of pulling off action with acting.

Black is clearly suited for the role of a modern-day Inspector Clouseau, a hero clown who can't help but save the day.

A more sure-footed shoot-'em-up that finds some heart, wit and perhaps enough momentum to spawn a formidable action franchise.

As he did in "Stranger Than Fiction," Ferrell displays surprising range when he ratchets down the volume.

Menacing and meditative, Hallows is arguably the best installment of the planned eight-film franchise, though audiences who haven't kept up with previous chapters will be hopelessly lost.

Fright is way too quick on its feet to be slowed by clichés. David Tennant seizes McDowall's role as Peter Vincent, now a Criss Angel-style clown vampire slayer. Christopher Mintz-Plasse was born to play a high school nerd.

Jack Goes Boating won't knock you over, but it lulls you with its slow-warming heart.

If you rely on films to keep your kids entertained and distracted for an hour and a half, Meatballs is a masterwork, a visual stunner that manages to break from animation's current 3-D rut.

Sarandon is worth leaving home for, even if Jeff won't.