One of the great things Scarfaria brings to this project is her apparent ability to convince a slew of wonderful actors to perform in small roles that appear in only a single sequence. That describes most of the actors in this film apart from the two leads.

The core family relationships ring pleasingly true, and the rebellious Merida is, alongside Katniss Everdeen, an intelligent, capable, and empathetic proto-riot grrrl with stupifyingly kickass hair and even better aim.

If you expect That's My Boy to be the Bad Dad equivalent of Bad Santa, you'll be sorely disappointed. Sandler can't quite adopt that same cynical edge, instead favoring corny and sentimental resolutions to untenable predicaments.

Benjamin Walker, as Lincoln, may not have the gangly gravitas of Raymond Massey's "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" – he looks like a young Liam Neeson doing a younger Bruce Campbell, frankly – but he does have a sly, self-effacing sense of humor that feels ever so Lincoln-esque

Rather born to wear a frock coat, Dancy shares the stammer-blush, winning-grin methodology of countryman Hugh Grant, only with more probity and better posture.

I found myself falling for it, hard. It's Trevorrow's feature debut and we'd like to see more, please.

Creating plot from lyrics, in this case, leads to heavy-handed literalism and limited creativity. The wall of music is amusing for a while, but grows into a loud, wearying assault long before the movie's two hours are up.

It's a promising epic that ends with what feels like a lie. In short, it's a glorious mess well worth seeing, but light-years away from what fans were expecting.

Take from the film's racial commingling what you want. Much of this may be old hat, even corny, and potentially offensive, but I haven't laughed out loud this often at a movie in ages.

As filmmaking debuts go, Panos Cosmatos' Beyond the Black Rainbow is as striking as it is nuts.

Anderson and his co-writer Roman Coppola have crafted an elegant and emphatic metaphor for adolescence, that tumultuous province of firsts and lasts.

The circus acts and the rehearsals, which are set to Katy Perry's "Fireworks," make the greatest use of the movie's 3-D capacities. Madagascar 3 may not rival the "greatest show on earth" but it's good enough to pack 'em in anyway.

The entire film wants to be the retort to an idle comment uttered by a prep school lacrosse mom in the stands: "When did the Indians starts playing lacrosse anyway?"

The set-up, and indeed the entire film, reeks of yawn-inducing boilerplate plotting.

Disappointingly, Piranha 3DD, the inevitable sequel to the remake, has none of Dante's wit, Aja's directorial skills, or Greg Nicotero's grotesqueries.

Although several great speeches and hilarious one-liners goose the film, God Bless America nevertheless peaks too early and becomes rather one-note.

Only Ruben Blades as President Calles and Bruce Greenwood as American Ambassador Dwight Morrow get out of this film with their acting dignity intact.

The film holds its twists too close to the chest, and there's little to chew on till the ambitiousness of its plotting is revealed late in the film.

Instead of putting the high in high school, this film is the kind of drug movie that gives pot smokers a bad name.

Ambitious, brutish, ruthlessly unromantic – has the right idea casting its heroine as a Joan of Arc-type crusader and its evil queen a dissertation (albeit first draft) on beauty as the most direct path to power for the disenfranchised female.

It's a wealth of material at odds with a scant running time and shallow focus.

Less extraordinary and considerably more banal, given the sci-fi/comedy subject matter, is Men in Black 3's story, which jumps the ectomorphic shark in high style but with a deficit of actual belly laughs.

Mansome is mostly miss, and pretty thin as well.

Hopelessly old-fashioned then, but not the aggressively bad picture you might have anticipated.

This new movie is a trifle, a listless excursion into the luxurious problems of rich, white people.

This crass and hugely dumb aliens vs. multiple earthling navies should thrill the hyperactive 10-year-old inside you. Adults, on the other hand – and especially genre-fan adults – will be bored to tears and wishing Bay (or at least Jerry Bruckheimer) had something of their own on the marquee out front.

A climactic speech on the lessons Western democracy might learn from Middle Eastern despotism offers a few moments of pure brilliance. I'd say that speech is worth the price of admission if it didn't also illustrate exactly what the film is missing: barbs that aim for the comedic bull's-eye.

Sisley is a former stand-up comic, although you'd never guess it here: Finding himself in the eye of a colossal shit storm of his own making, his Vincent is brusque and action oriented, his face, a picture of ulceration in progress.