One thing Siegel got absolutely right in this film is the casting.

It's visceral bloodbathery at its most repellent, but worse than that, it's horrific like the aftermath of a suicide bombing instead of terrifying like the bomb beneath the table or the knife behind the back.

Elliot’s coming-out story is mostly shunted into the film’s latter half, and when it does emerge it is woefully conventional and diluted by other goings-on.

For all its stylistic flourishes and interlocking storylines, Inglourious Basterds is, at its bullet-riddled core, a bloody good war movie, twisting and twisted and full of wordy shrapnel but no less kickass for it.

Ultimately offers some ironic amusement but wallows too long in the sins of its father.

Bland to the point of pointlessness.

Rodriguez’s technical wizardry is less showy here than in his other recent outings, which helps Shorts connect with kids on a basic human level.

The end result is an electrifying, morally complex story of the evil that men (and women) do in the name of the greater good.

Perfectly passable film.

Blomkamp and his entire cast and crew have created an instant genre classic that transcends the self-limiting ghetto implied by the term "science fiction" and instead, like precursors such as Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," engages not only the mind but the heart as well. It's magnificent.

Ponyo is another conceptually and thrilingly original masterstroke from an animator who long ago left Walt Disney in the dust.

“Caution: Contents may induce brain bleed.” That is, if you think too hard on the logic and mechanics of its time-travel conceit.

Bandslam belongs to Connell. He has the unruly 'fro and endearing shamblingness of a young Daniel Stern, and he ably brings to life that rarest of cinematic qualities: decency.

The script by Andy Stock and Rick Stempson (Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach) can, at times, be a nasty piece of work, and no amount of laughter will fully obscure the gag reflex that occasionally forms in the back of your throat.

An informative and nonpolemic look at the birth of the modern environmental movement and its various offshoots and key players.

The film's very title is a tease, however: It never gets all that loud, and you might doze off after 30 minutes of watching this unwieldy power trio recount their formative years and visit old haunts before heading on to a soundstage for their minimum rock & roll "summit."

A Perfect Getaway is, in its own delightfully silly and manipulative way, one of the most effective paranoid thrillers of the new millennium. That doesn't make it a great movie by a long shot.

A romantic comedy, too, but this time the romance is between two women, and one of them, truth be told, is a dud.

Giamatti is masterful.

G.I. Joe was not screened for critics, but that’s not because of its mindless action and nonsensical plot. It’s because G.I. Joe is the kind of movie that bludgeons the viewer into submission with its loud and constant barrage of sound and fury.

While it initially feels like a known quantity (although mentioning the "M"-word – mumblecore – is both pointless and distracting), Beeswax proves to be much more than simply another extreme close-up of late-twentysomething naifs trying to gather enough energy to flail about, emotionally or otherwise.

It's a neat, sweet experiment in meta-documentary filmmaking overall, but like Yi's own heart, it sabotages itself in the process and becomes another casualty of too-close scrutiny.

Second Skin might just be the most accurate and entertaining glimpse of the economy and psychology of technology since Tron.

Funny People – sensitive, shaggy, a little bit draggy – is as much about the maturation of Ira as a performer and George as a man as it is about Apatow’s maturation as an artist.

The Cove exposes the dark secrets that underpin the world’s dolphin mania, whether it’s our enjoyment of the animals performing circus tricks in aquariums, the swimming-with-dolphins industry, or the government recruitment of the sea mammals’ intelligence, communication, and sonar abilities for military applications.

Taken as a whole, Thirst meanders too far from the crossroads of life and death; it gets outright dull in spots, although they are few and far between.

The real problem with this Aliens encounter is that it's patently a Nick at Night midweek movie that inadvertently got greenlighted for a big-screen opening.

The Collector feels like the final, welcome nail in the bizarrely popular torture-porn coffin.