I couldn't help feeling that The International was stuck in second gear, like it couldn't decide whether to be fun or meaningful and so settled for being neither.

It comes as no surprise that the film is less about fandom as it is about the community fans create with one another – who else to turn to when the object of your affection, your enduring obsession, blows big chunks? – and Fanboys, a likable, shaggy picture, pays nice tribute to that community.

Taken moves so fast and with such single-minded, vindictive energy, there's no time for moral ambivalence.

Once spoiled by the gossamer disquietude of Kim Jee-woon's original Tale, it's difficult to view this Americanized version in anything but the blandest light.

New in Town might have better played on the less demanding stage of, say, a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.

It's a testament to Bill Nighy's cadaverous panache that this third entry in the ongoing exsanguinators vs. lycanthropes franchise (that's vampires and werewolves to anyone not weaned on Famous Monsters) is as tolerable as it is.

Inkheart was shot in and around Liguria on the Italian Riviera, and it looks absolutely ravishing.

It's chop-socky vindaloo, pleasing on a platter but awfully difficult to swallow whole.

Hotel for Dogs is a decent family film, sure to please animal-loving kids and their parents alike. Well-acted, the movie also looks good and is stocked with lots of goofy gadgetry.

MBV 3D is full-on, old-school, Fangoria-approved, gorehound heaven – a supersaturated arterial goregasm with zero socially redeeming values for anyone other than first-year med students.

Bassett as Voletta is her usual captivating self.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop deserves to be cited for loitering.

I'd be hard-pressed to name another recent film so deeply noxious, soul-sick, and unfunny.

It's fascinating how an innocuous film can suddenly flare up into offensive claptrap.

Calling The Unborn a dull, plodding, exposition-crammed slog through a twilight of barely maintained tedium is like calling "Valkyrie" a yawn. It's too easy.

Zwick may be the definition of a modern blockbuster filmmaker, but he's also spent his entire career struggling to find the balance between opposing impulses – the sentimentalist's desire for emotional-historical heft and the artist's fascination with conflicted humanity – a struggle that's all over Defiance.

Shannon is monstrously good – unpredictable where the other actors are clipped and careful – and he steals the whole picture in two short, shattering scenes. When Shannon exits the film, the air gets sucked out again, and you realize the pretty artifice extends to more than just the Wheelers.

Be forewarned: Folman closes his film with a grisly, real-death denouement that may give you some nightmares of your own. As well it should.

Everything that was sharp in the original text has been rounded and buffed.

Ultimately, it's a long, incoherent mess of a film, enlivened only by the sure knowledge that the great Will Eisner's original is available to one and all at your nearest comic-book shop.

After years of wandering in the wilderness of artistic obscurity – like Vincent van Gogh – misunderstood comic genius Adam Sandler has finally found his audience: 3-year-olds. It makes perfect sense, really.

Last Chance Harvey is so much an "actors' film" that the hand of the director seems hidden until it bursts into view with something clunky.

Sweet and wise and often laugh-out-loud funny (just like Grogan's book), Marley & Me isn't just for dog people; it's just not for Cruella De Vil.

We all know how it ends, and that foreknowledge dooms Singer's hotly anticipated and much troubled account of the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life.

The lesson learned from The Tale of Despereaux is that an overabundance of vocal talent does not a good cartoon make.

The keen observations of The Class ultimately become a remedial education in themselves.

Feels not only like a movie from another culture but from another world.

Now, with Seven Pounds, the transformation of Will Smith is complete: Gone is any trace of love-me impishness, replaced by one of the sourest pusses Hollywood has seen since Joaquin Phoenix got his Screen Actors Guild card.