Too self-referential for its own good by half.

A lightweight confection, this French import slides down easily even though it never truly satisfies.

It's hard to decide what rankles most: what an astonishing monument to Shadyac's self-absorption I Am is, or how flat-out bad – incompetent, even – the filmmaking is.

Talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

The film has little flash of life and energy.

So potent it nearly succeeds even as a vacuum sits squarely at its center.

Your Highness is awfully vulgar fun when it works, which is much of the time (although it could've benefited from a few judicious cuts here and there).

In his short career (The Station Agent, The Visitor), McCarthy has established himself as a craftsman of conventionally quirky pictures that are ENTIRELY about ingratiating themselves with the audience.

Comes across as a particularly unspecial "Very Special Episode" of a television series that never made it past the pilot stage.

Arthur overextends its welcome and relies too much on prop comedy.

It's a strange and electrifying brew of Hollywood genre tropes recalibrated for a globalized sensibility.

The true wonder of this low-budget movie, however, is its acquisition of the rights to so much of the previously mentioned music. It's almost exclusively Dylan and the Dead, but damned if you won't be stopping for some Cherry Garcia ice cream on the way home.

It is, in effect, a movie-house meta mirror, warped and weird, strange but true (except when it isn't). It's whatever you want it to be, which doesn't necessarily make it a great movie (although it contains moments of greatness), but it IS – by virtue of its premise alone – boldly unique.

It's not nearly as complex and eerily existential as the director's debut, "Moon," but in its own way it's an even more satisfying time slice of identity-scrambled sci-fi.

The only remotely entertaining aspects of Insidious come from Whannell and Sampson as a comic pair of hypercompetitive hipster ghost hunters, and even that schtick is repeated ad nauseam.

Some films are saccharine, but Hop is pure sugar.

It's something of a Tiananmen Square face-off, minus the overt politics, which makes it all the more spellbinding.

Wimpy Kid's filmmakers have gone off-book, so to speak, to inflect Greg with a surprising cruel streak.

Appallingly bad stuff.

Although the sequences grow somewhat repetitive in spite of their vicious escalation, and some of the details challenge believability, I Saw the Devil is a spectacle of substantial merit.

It is an utterly unique and highly ambitious project that isn't afraid to veer wildly from witty, risqué comedy to heavy emotional melodrama, often in the same sequence.

Perhaps every decade gets the Jane Eyre it deserves: Is the emphasis of conscience over passion emblematic of our times?

Has very little soul to speak of, but it's got swagger to burn.

Paul is offensive solely for being so underachieving.

This nature documentary about the vanishing lions of Africa is not your children's "Lion King."

Limitless is a writer's movie by a writer, and it explores the dark side of the muse.

This Red Riding Hood loses sight of the forest for the trees on its way to Grandma's house.

The how-it-was-made demonstration may have been the most captivating part of Mars Needs Moms.

The kindest thing that might be said of this Eighties nostalgia trip is that its formulaic plot and overall mirthlessness are meant as mimetic tributes to that blasted decade.

Viewed as a war film, it's strictly standard run 'n' gun fare.

Hudgens' dimples threaten at times to overtake the narrative, but in the end, they're no match for Olsen's creepy-ass smirk, which, frankly, appears ready-made for Tim Burton's next outing.

Hall Pass has half the right idea: Scratch out "Hall," and just … pass.

"When you race with the devil, you'd better be fast as hell." (And you, angry driver, are not that fast.)

The performances are superlative, as is much of the film's Jewish flavor. The ham is barely noticeable.

The Adjustment Bureau is, above all, a romance of chance and chaos theory of the heart. (In this respect, some viewers will recognize it as kin to the early Gwyneth Paltrow fantasy "Sliding Doors.")

It is Depp, however, who really nails this thing by simply blending in with all the other voice talent and characters and not reverting to the oversized Captain Jack Sparrow swagger. Rango becomes the hero of his own story, and for this he needs no stinkin' badge.

Ultimately, Lemmy is a lesson in artistic stoicism and the possibility of growing old gracefully within the confines of an art form that almost always rewards youth and punishes (or, worse, forgets) anyone over 30.

It makes you wonder, ultimately, how the carbon footprint created by the film will stand up to the test of time.

The comic, his career now apparently in total free fall, tackles the (dual) role(s) so broadly (no pun intended) that it's just plain annoying.

This is no more (but no less?) than what we have rather oddly come to expect from Neeson in his late period (Taken, The A-Team).

It's definitely not hard to understand what the little girls see in Bieber, and this film delivers the goods. This one's for the fans, not the movie buffs.

Kidman is the only refreshing thing in the movie. Otherwise, Just Go With It is an exercise in stagnation.

Check the credits: That move is ripped straight from producer Michael Bay's playbook.

This is smart, quirky, frequently laugh-out-loud comedy, in all seriousness.

Novelty alone does not a good idea make, and in the case of Gnomeo and Juliet, it's rather a disturbing, even fetishy one.

Absolutely mandatory viewing for aspiring animators and filmmakers. (In terms of pacing, scoring, editing, and narrative, it's a film school unto itself.) For the rest of us, however, it's simply magic.

A mildly engaging and roughly historical action picture.

It's only February but I can already name the year's winner of Most Thoughtless Gay Stereotype in Film award. The dubious honor goes to The Roommate.

While this is no "Clueless," to be sure, it's also, thankfully, no "Born in East L.A."

There's nothing that feels like real rage, nothing that even remotely approximates the spiritual decimation of a termination.

Those audiences who have complained about the clunky exposition and mawkish emotional dialogue in Cameron's films will discover the "King of the World"'s own dramatic talents to be on par with the Bard in comparison to the shouty, over-emoted hokum on display here.

Delivers sinister atmosphere but few shocks.

If you're searching for pure, unadulterated fisticuffs joy, you could do far worse than Ip Man 2.

As much as Bardem is an expressive instrument for parlaying Iñárritu's somber worldview, so too is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose stunning compositions find the poetry amid the sorrow.

West (Con Air) saturates his imagery in a sickly, sulphurous stew of rotten-egg yellows and oranges, making a mediocre picture downright repellent at times.

Ultimately, however, The Way Back fails to connect on the all-important visceral, emotional level.

Bell steals every scene she's in, and her abrupt dismissal feels all the crueler for so much charisma wasted: She shoulda been a contender.

Oh, the ennui. In Somewhere, it's so thick you could cut it with Stephen Dorff's chiseled cheekbones.

Howard surprises with this decidedly honest comedy-melodrama.

Gondry's update of vigilante crime fighter The Green Hornet's escapades is above all an exercise in frustration.

Although it is achingly sad, Rabbit Hole is not maudlin or depressing.

Those moments, as affecting as they are, can't surmount the overworkshopped feel of the whole film.

Hedlund's got a hell of a voice, rotgut-ragged, and whether he's crooning or wooing, whatever he's selling, and no matter how cornpone, I'm buying.

Things do not end well, least of all for the audience.

Summer Wars is a magnificently manufactured piece of film entertainment that goes beyond the obvious and manages to comment, often obliquely, on everything from Facebook to virtual war and/or terrorism without ever seeming heavy-handed or strident.

Made in Dagenham does a good job of capturing the period. But too often it's simply put in service to the obvious, as heard in those uplifting choruses of "You Can Get It If You Really Want."

Despite his character's fondness for mugging and mouthing like Michael Corleone, Spacey (and by extension, his director and writer Norman Snider) can't quite catch the operatic wallop of Corleone's arc, possibly because the film is played top-to-bottom like a caprice.

Listless, dull, and totally lacking in spectacle.

All this is not to say that the Coens' True Grit is an awful film; it's just that these filmmakers have set their own standards for excellence, and True Grit falls short.

Apart from the smutty giggles that derive from the mere mention of the Focker family surname, this third entry in the now 10-year-old comedy franchise falls flat.

It's a "keep calm, carry on" wartime melodrama of the first order, and stiff though it may be, it is never less than brilliantly done.

Unbearable.

It's confused and confusing, by turns hilarious and off-putting. In short, it's awfully hard to love I Love You Philip Morris.

It's hard, as a viewer, not to shudder in tandem with Lisa – this isn't a love match, it's two would-be motivational coaches swapping slogans.

Virtually flawless performances and directorial execution render The Fighter one of the most thrilling movies of 2010.

Megamind gets existential, but only in blips, and while it is never anything less than vibrant and exceedingly clever, it is also a rather slight thing for such mega-sized proportions.

There's absolutely no shortage of stunning eye candy in this spiffy, sexy, and frequently thrilling sequel to Disney's 1982 game-changer Tron. There is, however, a certain lack of connectivity between the digitally enhanced characters onscreen and the user – excuse me, "audience" – in the flesh.

It takes great skill to make something so ponderously stultifying as this third film entry in the ongoing adaptation of C.S. Lewis' series of splendidly imagined children's books.

Without sizzle or thrills, The Tourist becomes as sluggish and rank as the Venice waterways.

In its best moments, the film's duo of Galifianakis and Downey Jr. remind us of a bickering Laurel & Hardy digging themselves out of another fine mess. And we're happy to be along for the ride.

And while the blond, youthful, and entirely sane-seeming Lomborg was initially pilloried for his calm, rational views by the global environmental movement, his ideas and solutions arrive as a refreshing tonic in the face of global warming's more vocal fearmongers.

It's manic and wearyingly predictable, and as soon as it begins, you know exactly how it's going to end: with a hard, fast crash (and the requisite yakkety epilogue).

Fans of the series, if there are any left and I'm not too certain that there are, will enjoy the usual smorgasbord of lower intestines spilling out from the screen and onto their laps (via the profoundly crappy 3-D) as well as an above-average opening slaughter involving two men, one woman, several buzz saws, and a crowd of gawking onlookers.

This is meat-and-potatoes (and bullets) action filmmaking, although, really, that title's got to go.

The film is a startlingly original and haunting take on our ageless fear of otherness.

Terrific performances can't save this preposterous film from itself, but they do make it more bearable to watch.

Tangled is a serviceable kids' picture and marks a milestone in the history of Disney animation, but it's splitting hairs to characterize it beyond that.

Von Trotta's film is informative, instructive, intriguing, and polished, yet it finds no ecstasy – religious or otherwise.

Much of Rare Exports is seen through the eyes of its preteen protagonist, which explains some of the story's minor omissions (who, exactly, hired this nefarious multinational mining outfit and why exactly?).

This drama-horror hybrid, set within a New York ballet company, strikes a tone more along the lines of the terrifying hallucinatories of Aronofsky's breakout film, "Requiem for a Dream," revisiting, too, favorite themes of monster mommies and female hysteria.

Drained of much of its presumed power by a distinct "been there, seen that" vibe.

This is a quest movie, with a lot of ground covered, and just as our heroes never stay long in one place or feel safe in their surroundings, neither does the audience.

You didn't actually think Stephin Merritt was going to cozy up to the camera and reveal his deepest-darkest, did you?

Burlesque bumps and grinds. And then it continues to grind and grind and grind.

I suppose when you make a movie, however tangentially, about Viagra, you're required to insert at least one scene of its side effects, but the broadness with which Zwick plays it out is like a stake to the heart of the film's hard-earned but fast-lost authenticity.

Amid the increasingly horrific images of daily ghetto life are moments of utterly unexpected, haunting beauty, including a reel of color film that does more to humanize an inhuman situation than anything I've ever seen.

Maybe taking a cue from his namesake dish, that much-maligned Scottish pudding concoction made with sheep innards and root vegetables, Haggis presents a mishmash of genres in this redo of Fred Cavayé's 2008 French film "Pour Elle."

Danny Boyle's 127 Hours is the calm, cool, and tear-your-hair-out exciting mirror image of Tony Scott's bland and formulaic "Unstoppable."