Hughes creates a white-knuckle scene from a mayoral debate about zoning policy. You could've heard a Skittle drop in the packed house screening I attended. That, and Broken City's terrifyingly realistic car chase – another throwback to vintage Hughes – are alone worth the price of admission.

It's a mistake to confuse Zero Dark Thirty for "truth" – that would be a disservice to the high level of craftsmanship, from first-billed actors to below-the-line production crew, at work in this movie fiction – but there is admirably little fat on its bones.

Stick around through the credits for an extra closing scene that leaves the door of Heather's new home wide open for a sequel.

Despite the unrelenting action and the terrific cast, Gangster Squad comes up more scattered than successful.

The film has lots of small moments that make it a worthy effort.

Now that his passion project is out of the way, I look forward to seeing what Chase does next. He's sure to have his editor's pen back in hand by then.

The film boasts an insistent and unquestioning patriotism. What begins as a drama devolves by the halfway point into an overly long chase film, which only grows more and more boring.

First, to dispel the two talking points attending The Impossible, Juan Antonio Bayona's dramatization of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: No, it's not racist, and no, you don't have to be a parent to feel the film in your bones.

Fine to look at, but good luck feeling anything.

The actors deserve credit for the professionalism they bring to this stinker, especially Tomei, who plays it straight as a contemporary have-it-all-or-die-trying mom, and Midler, who's given little to do, but works up an amusing backstory about her days as a good-time gal on the evening news.

Despite these quibbles, Django Unchained offers an embarrassment of riches (and actors in tiny cameos).

When Les Misérables is good, it is very, very good, and when it is bad, it's usually because Russell Crowe has opened his mouth.

This violent, sometimes brutal suspense thriller was thus quite a surprise, both in how effectively Cruise creates a commanding physical presence despite his lack of size, and for how well the film works in general.

When Murray's around, he's the only hot dog in the room.

Does Apatow understand his heroes are assholes?

Watching this movie is not a complete waste of time, but it is little more than a sitcom-lite diversion.

To sum it up, there is little that is unexpected in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Rather than an epic continuation of Jackson's Middle-earth obsession, the film seems more like the work of a man driving around a multilevel parking garage without being able to find the exit.

Cinematically well-made, The Other Son is nevertheless workmanlike. The actors are all excellent, the storytelling compassionate, and the overall sense one takes from the film is more humane than political.

A study in fine gradations of resentment in the great outdoors, In Our Nature is a little too subtle for this genre. Country-house-fiasco films are only satisfying when the shit truly hits the fan.

It is certainly competent, lovely to look at, but leaves little lasting impression.

Watching this all-too-predictable romantic comedy/drama, my overwhelming thought was this: Given all the great filmmakers and film projects that can't find funding, how did this effort secure its reported $35 million for production?

This film is more a love story about the marriage between Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), rather than a historically accurate backstage look at the making of this important movie in the Hitchcock filmography and the American psyche.

An exercise in pure sadism, The Collection moves at a clip that leaps over plot holes in its race to elicit fright.

Bad Kids Go to Hell is the kind of movie its own pampered, careless, coked-up characters would make as a class project at the ass-end of senior year: boys running around with weapons, girls mugging sexy-sassy, narrative continuity be damned.

Holy Motors is as individualistic a movie as you're likely to encounter – both in terms of the filmmaker's intent and the viewer's takeaway. Warmth and humor abide within its every frame but, like Carax's dreamer at the film's outset, you must find the key within yourself that unlocks the mysteries.

As with all the films in the Universal Soldier series, this is mostly a catalog of increasingly brutal fights, which are the main attraction in and of themselves.

As with his previous film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," Dominik's ideas get the better of his creative handiwork as he throws off his pacing to follow points he has already made.

The film retreads much of the anti-comedic territory already bulldozed in Heidecker and Wareheim's own "Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie," retaining the scatological flavor but none of the surrealism.