This is exactly the sort of film I wasn't expecting from either Gorak or his producers. In many too-obvious ways this is just a formulaic riff on Spielberg's "War of the Worlds."

By trying too hard to stay on this side of hip and the other side of sentimental, Crowe winds up with a zoo that's neither fish nor fowl.

Spielberg's typically emotive storytelling only comes to the fore in a few of the film's pivotal action scenes, a couple of which are truly spectacular and remind us only all too well of what this film might have been.

It's a period piece about the origins of psychoanalysis and the sexual confusions of its progenitors that is eloquent and handsomely made, if never quite revelatory.

What's so intensely pleasurable about The Artist, however, is not its predetermined seriocomic trajectory but the endless parade of smartly creative and self-referential gags, which include all manner of sly, silent delights; the inevitable Jack Russell; and even an extended orchestral cue of Bernard Herrmann's, cribbed outright from "Vertigo."

One wishes for a chewier whodunit – there just aren't enough clues for the viewer to work with – and the reveal of the mole is perversely anticlimactic. But maybe that's just stickling. We always knew Smiley'd get his man.

A cracking good adventure film well worthy of classic Saturday-afternoon matinee status. It's also, in myriad ways, a more youthful version of Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."...What you don't have, however, is a great movie.

It's a knockout, sucker punch of a performance, and although it doesn't completely erase the memory of Rapace (and why should it?), Mara's doomy gaze cuts through the hype and bores straight into your soul.

One of the freshest and most original movies around right now, though caveat emptor: This may not be enough to make it likable.

The final 30 odd minutes of this revisionist Holmes explodathon are downright thrilling, and it should go without saying but we'll restate it for the record: Downey Jr. inhabits the role of Sherlock Holmes to a near-molecular level.

Left me with the feeling I've seen much of this before. It's not that I'd like something better, it's just that I'd like something new.

I really think the entire payoff to the Chipmunks' gambit comes in those inevitable moments when Dave bellows in exasperation, "Alvin." Maybe if we all bellow in unison it will be forceful enough to put an end to this painful film franchise.

Equally harrowing and heartrending, Shame is a film that feels akin to going into battle, and I for one didn't emerge unscathed.

For a comedy, The Sitter is frightfully spare on full-bodied laughs.

This French import is as casual as the summer afternoons of childhood that it depicts.

Mostly, New Year's Eve is appalling stuff, a poorly constructed, sentimental sham. Auld lang suck.

Padilha's film offers no easy answers, but the title is a tip off as to where at least his sympathies lie.

Knuckle is the real deal, with the strapping, brutally human Traveller clans butting heads with not only one another but with the very future of their subculture's existence.

A coda set in 1965 seals the film's status as a bourgeois fantasy, but fear not: Paris' student and worker riots of 1968 are only a hair's breadth away.

Despite its short running time, Being Elmo is an engrossingly layered documentary.

Although a nip and a tuck here and there might improve Hugo's overall pace, there is no denying that this love letter to the movies is something to cherish.

Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Chicago, Gods and Monsters) takes over the directing reins for these final two parts; his most noteworthy contribution to the series so far is a terrifyingly staged birth scene that should turn the teen fan base off of sex altogether … which is precisely what this whole dumb, punishing series has been gunning for from the start.

Thus, this indifferently shot film winds up being another in a long line of creative works by men that exploit the legacy of Marilyn Monroe for their own satisfaction and little public good.

It is with immense pleasure that I can report that Disney's Muppet reboot movie is an absolute delight.

Sarah Smith pulls the various threads of this wholly original – well, as original as can be reasonably expected given the thousands of cinematic iterations Christmastime has provoked over the years – together into a very coherent, visually stunning, oftentimes laugh-out-loud hilarious holiday film.

Dunst's performance is a thing of calm beauty and mired grit, fully deserving of the Best Actress Award she received for this work at Cannes. The entire supporting cast also proves to be a delight, even in their obstinacy and oddities.

The Descendants is beautifully shot (by Phedon Papamichael) and compellingly performed, especially by its young stars, and it has moments of startling tenderness. If only it didn't feel phony to its bones.

I'm not sure which is more freakish: the fact that this savagely unfun and relentlessly generic Adam Sandler comedy has spawned its own (infinitely more entertaining) Internet meme or the realization that something has gone seriously awry with the decision-making process of Al Pacino's agent.

Herzog, ever the eccentric filmmaker on a mission, may have met his match in this man of the cloth.

The Greek myths, of course, will endure. The same cannot be said for Singh's silly, self-serious, instantly forgettable, and inaptly named Immortals.

Although appealing to look at, Happy Feet Two is noisy, busy, and unable to spark much emotional involvement in the viewer other than fear for the characters' well-being and a touch of existential angst by way of a couple of krill.

A grinning but toothless comedy, this Christmas-themed outing pales in inventiveness compared to the original, which brought sweet, silly anarchy to its one-thing-leads-to-another plotting.

There's no question that the actors and filmmakers have fashioned a compelling (if unformed) love story of a certain age – which is not to be confused for a love story for the ages.

Banderas, taking time off from voicing kids' films and appearing in Robert Rodriguez outings, plays Ledgard with just the right amount of borderline-freaky, intensity, and Anaya is another of Almodovar's terrifically talented and shockingly beautiful female leads.

Filmed primarily in desaturated colors and oblique shadows, the look of J. Edgar is spot-on. The time frame jumps around, spanning decades in a single leap, but it doesn't strain the structure. Eastwood and DiCaprio have delivered a nuanced story about a man, a mythos, and an institution that relies on the facts rather than the legend.

Durkin's film seems to exist in its own fractured dream state. It's hypnotic, narcotic, and trembling on the verge of either dread or redemption or some hazy state of nothingness in between.

The film is really a story about community and how it unites for something it deems important. But more, it is a story about mood and tone. Kaurismäki's mordant humor – part verbal, part visual – remains intact.

An excellently cast biopic about yet another self-destructive genius who burnt out but will never fade away – at least not in France, or wherever cigarettes, alcohol, and sex are still allowed.

To a one, they nail the humor, all right, but they also, quite crucially, humanize the high concept.

They have some fun playacting at class warriors on the lam – and Seyfriend, it must be said, rocks a killer bob – but it's all just big-budget dress-up in a futurescape that reeks of phoniness.

What The Rum Diary lacks in narrative astonishment it almost makes up for in boozy charm. Depp, Ribisi, and Rispoli are a sight to behold.

Take Shelter is a deeply unsettling movie. Writer/director Jeff Nichols (an Austin resident and director of the award-winning 2007 feature "Shotgun Stories") doles out information as strategically as a government official.

The seductive interplay of Banderas and Hayek, the barely recognizable vocal contributions of Galifianakis, and the Southern backwoods speech of Thornton and Sedaris all keep us attuned to the events on the screen.

Unlikely to be either the tea party or Occupy America's first pick for best film of the year, Margin Call is nevertheless a surprisingly adroit effort to A) explain the birth pains of our current financial woes, and B) show what it might have been like, in these first few hours within the confines of an early investment trading firm casualty.

"Shakespeare in Love" it ain't, but the wealth of stage and screen talent on display, most if not all of whom have essayed one or another of the Bard's characters in the past (including a modern-day introduction by Sir Derek Jacobi), make for a pleasantly ridiculous descent into utter confabulation.

There's punishment and then there's prolonged, squirm-inducing psychological torture, which is a more accurate description of All's Faire in Love, a romantic comedy that will only be "romantic" to audience members under the age of 14 and utterly devoid of genuine yuks and the necessary rom-com spark.

Still, once you accept Paul W.S. Anderson's entirely unnecessary adaptation on its own terms (nonsensical, underachieving), it has its limited charms, which include a snigger-inducing alphabet soup of accents, a standout rooftop swordfight, and British comedian James Corden as the Musketeers' put-upon manservant.

It plays very much like it advertises itself: a mixtape – Fear of a Black Planet, then and now.

The film has a Leone eye (courtesy of cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchía) coupled with a drowsy, doomy pace which, emboldened by the salt-licked Bolivian settings and the finely calibrated acting from all, makes for a phantasmagoric trip down a strangely different memory lane.

Atkinson's fans are likely to rejoice as the comedian twists his face and body to and fro, but the rest of us will not be recruited.

Carla Gugino, however, energizes the film with every step of her self-assured stride. She genuinely manages to create a dimensional character who is fulsomely inspirational – and as I said at the outset, that's not too shabby an accomplishment when it comes to the world of women and sports movies.

What is so surprising – even exhilarating – about The Names of Love is that it shucks off the desultory roadblocks that engine the modern romantic comedy – all that razzmatazz of missed connections and dunderheaded misunderstandings.

More funhouse spook show than actual horror movie but, like the black magic roller coaster ride it's predicated on, it has a startling amount of jolts, frissons, and downright freak-outs to qualify as the best teen date movie of the month if not the year. Boo. Scary.

The Big Year's biggest disappointment is its inadequacy in elucidating the passion of the birder. What ardency, and what an exceptional, impenetrable world they move in. I for one wanted a better look at it.

The Way never arrives anywhere you couldn't see coming a mile away, but it does so with such empathy that its conclusions feel comforting rather than overly predictable.

Heijningen's The Thing is tightly paced, has enough imaginative horror to satisfy even the most jaded gorehound, and never strays too far from its source, so why do you come away from it feeling like it was the runner-up in a daylight nightmare festival?

Finally, along comes a remake – a darn faithful one, too – that's not a just a pointless rehash or mindless retread.

There are some moments of blessed levity to the otherwise mordant melodramatics...That's not enough to sustain interest in the Taylors and their toxic emotional foibles, however.

Fans of the considerably more pedestrian "Julie & Julia" will likely have to attach drool buckets to their chins in order to avoid hours of tedious mopping up, so lusciously bizarre are the comestibles on display here.

Like the analogous "Before Sunrise," Weekend manages to ride the line between character study, comedy, drama, and a host of other genres without feeling cramped.

The film provides a whole new way of looking at the same old dead things. Eat up.

But most damningly, Shut Up Little Man! fails to convey what was so hypnotic about the original tapes, and Bate's decision to re-enact the transcripts with actors seems weirdly contrary to the spirit of the thing.

This story about two death-obsessed teens is twee and precious instead of genuine and candid.

Lost's Evangeline Lilly remains lost, however, in this film role as Charlies's too-good-to-be-true romantic interest.

Margaret definitely has many elements for a successful drama. It's unfortunate that no one was able to shape them into a functional movie.

With its combustible mix of high-octane action and Christian faith, and an overall vibe that falls somewhere between bloodthirsty nihilism and an unshakable belief in the twinned powers of religious redemption and obsession, Machine Gun Preacher is certainly the strangest examination of grace under AK-47 fire to merit a mainstream release in ages.

All of this is fair "can you take it?" territory, but in he end you find yourself wondering where Nineties-era German cinema-transgressor Jörg Buttgereit is, and when he might deign to make "Nekromantik 3." As for Human Centipede 2, well, frankly it kind of sucks ass. And we mean that literally.

A light but emotionally heady confection from France.

Dream House is neither haunting (as the marketing appears to promise) nor all that original. But it does, thank goodness for small favors, have Elias Koteas.

Ranks as one of the season's most intelligent and polished films.

Molina and Weaver, who, most of the time, perform brilliantly, move through Abduction as if on autopilot.

There's nothing here for the viewer to do, no kinks to work out, no double-crossings to anticipate, not even a half-hearted flail at figuring out how Danny ticks.

Filmmaker Steve James is apparently incapable of making an uninteresting documentary, even when his subject matter might presumably be thoroughly played out.

Music has rarely appeared more essential to the human drama.

Pacing problems and shallow psychological inquiries plague this film almost as much as the overworked metaphor that supplies the film's title.

Referencing everything from "Deliverance" to "The Evil Dead" to "Fargo" and nailing its central conceit dead-on (literally!), this is one of those rare genre comedies that near-perfectly balances its blend of grue, guffaws, and gag reflexes.

What goes most wrong is the casting. Every facet of Faris' performance feels off.

Mostly it's just terribly funny and sad and beautifully acted and terrifically feel-good for being, you know, a cancer comedy.

In its third act, Life, Above All takes a bit of a dip into la-la land, in terms of believability – how precisely is an impoverished family supposed to have afforded an ambulance and hospice care? – but that doesn't diminish the emotional impact of Manyaka's performance and the idea that courage can be infectious, too.

Ultimately, the remake is, at best, rote and, at worst, totally unnecessary.

Though the film meanders through some chum-heavy patches, this genuine crowd-pleaser from the producers of "The Blind Side" is a worthy new entrant into the boy-and-his-underdog film genre.

Moneyball is a smart, funny, and thoughtful baseball movie.

Magic Trip comes off nearly as scattershot as the events it depicts, which is a major stumbling block.

It's not a pretty picture, but it is a hellaciously gorgeous and original film.

For the first 30 minutes I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a really promising pilot for network TV.

I suspect it's that spirit as much as the injustice of her incarceration that drew so many people to her cause and inspired this labor-of-love documentary about her journey to hell and back.

Its sappy, melodramatic overtones – Bonnie Tyler not included – can be overlooked, as this is as much a political statement as it is a love story.

Which ultimately is what Applause is really about: applying the greasepaint of the daily mundane over the scar tissue of a damaged life, striving for a reality outside of a bottle (and off the stage) while still maintaining some semblance of what made this particular lion roar in the first place.

What does startle is how tiresome it all is.

I can't remember the last time I felt so seduced by a film.

Warrior resists many opportunities to seal an easy resolution, and for this you remain with it until the final punch.

Director Benny Chan has fashioned a visually sumptuous period wushu film with a strikingly contemplative and pacifist bent.

Most unforgivable, however, is the film's coda in which real Georgian victims pose for the camera with pictures of their loved ones lost in the five days of war. Using real people to impart the emotions that the entire film was unable to evince is simply cheap exploitation.

Contagion is certainly the most realistic portrayal of a global pandemic I've seen, but that doesn't make it the most entertaining, or even all that intellectually interesting.

The real tension of the piece lies in the sound design, with its layering of heavy breaths, inexplicably compromised frequencies, and invasive thwackings of no known origin to the ship hull.

About as humorless – and joyless – as they come.

Higher Ground may not be a true revelation, but it does show a viable path an actor might take to shape intelligent material on her own terms.

Echotone is scattered, for sure (the sound ordinance battle is poorly handled), but as an anecdotal account of Austin in the first decade of a new century, it's rarely anything less than compelling.