Scott Foundas

In most horror movies, it's a given that we should root for the heroes to make it out alive, but Diary of the Dead isn't nearly so certain, and so it terrifies us all the more.

While the respectable result is a more meaningful film than just about anything Mandoki worked on during his 17 years in Hollywood ("Angel Eyes," "Message in a Bottle"), pic suffers from an overindulgence of triumph-over-adversity cliches and a meandering narrative.

Dog Days is in fact a bleak but deeply felt humanism -- a yearning that we might all learn to better love our neighbors and, perhaps more importantly, ourselves.

The Bling Ring traces an intriguing feedback loop of which it is knowingly a part: a movie that affords its subjects the very immortality they so aggressively sought.

This represents at least as much of an artistic setback for Smith as "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma" were advances.

Not just the funniest but the smartest comedy around by a mile.

The movie's chief liability, though, is Rose herself, who also co-scripted with first-time director Robert Cary and who registers several notches below Nia Vardalos on the totem of unlikely double-threats.

As merry pranksters they have no match, and as they age (Knoxville is 35 now), they only grow in appeal. As they proudly hurl their tattooed (by ink and battle scars) bodies into harm's way, a devilish glint in their eyes, it's as if they've discovered the fountain of youth, and its name is Jackass.

Margot at the Wedding gives its characters (and us) something to laugh about.

Mann has done something transformative with Farrell: The Irish actor has never had this much charisma and natural authority in a role, and as he navigates that gray area between Crockett's real identity and his fabricated one, revealing subtle fissures in the character's cocksure facade, he's fascinating to watch.

The concept here holds more promise than the execution.

Rich in its love of surfing but curiously short on such footage, well-meaning directorial debut by producer Robert Mickelson is boosted by winning performances, but ultimately about as memorable as a day of 3-4 foot swells.

An enthralling, gorgeously mounted depiction of the complicated relationship between the post-Enlightenment writer and philosopher Friedrich Schiller and the sisters Charlotte von Lengefeld (who would become his wife) and Caroline von Beulwitz (his eventual biographer).

The film's power is undeniable, as a bittersweet valentine to Buzz and the many others who came to Hollywood and found a factory that produced dreams, yes, but nightmares too.

Cruise is probably the most graceful physical performer to occupy the screen since Burt Lancaster, and in this sort of action role, he's just about peerless...He may not be a great actor, but to find a greater movie star would be a nigh impossible mission.

This is a heartfelt endeavor, given weight by Shimono's extraordinary performance, in which the actor uses the subtlest flicks of his weary brow to call forth torrents of sorrow and minefields of regret.

There’s no denying, though, that Daniels knows how to push an audience’s buttons, and as crudely obvious as The Butler can be...it’s also genuinely rousing. By the end, it’s hard not to feel moved, if also more than a bit manhandled.

Far from a complete success: It takes too long to get to its central premise and, once there, too often meanders away from it. But Campbell is close to astonishing whenever she's onscreen.

Things could be worse. At the end of the day, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is nothing if not consistent -- taking care of business solidly, professionally and without a lick of the genuine wonderment or inspiration that you can find in surplus in Jon Favreau's Spielberg-influenced "Iron Man."

The quiet and intimacy of what is essentially a two-character piece are well juxtaposed by Brooks against the vast desert expanses of her home country, captured in sumptuous wide-screen cinematography by the great Ian Baker.

A sparkling and savvy comedy of political manners.

It’s a bit square, never particularly surprising, yet very rich in its sense of creative people and their spirit of self-reinvention.

There may be no other actor (Thornton)working today (or as frequently) who is this good each and every time out.

Take it or leave it, Alverson’s fourth feature is singular stuff, and it reconfirms the director as one of the truly bold voices in the all-too-homogenous U.S. indie film scene.

This is the umpteenth movie I’ve seen this year about guys in their 30s who aren't quite sure what they want to do with their lives, and it's the only one that strikes a real chord, because it's neither an exaltation nor a condemnation of slackerdom, but rather just a sweet little fable about how sometimes the life that you think could be so much better is actually pretty damn good already.

Shot quickly and cheaply in high-definition video and almost entirely on one set, the movie has almost zero visual energy, but it teems with snappy dialogue and the same carnival anarchy Lumet brought to "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Network."

McKinnon's direction is nothing if not atmospheric -- his best scenes unfold with a pungent languor that suggests the power of the backwoods to turn hours into days and days into years. If only the sum total were a movie more "In the Bedroom" than it is everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.

Scaled like an epic but possessing the narrative simplicity of a fable, The Warrior unfolds over a brisk 85 minutes of screen time, keeping dialogue to a minimum as it celebrates the power of stories told through handcrafted, CGI-free images.