Like Mumbai, Slumdog pulses and throbs with raw, unadulterated life and the hope for a better Bombay, today. It's brilliant.

Misanthropy in the movies has a new face. And, surprising to say, it's a handsome one. A matinee-idol face, in fact. Some might even go so far as to call it "dreamy." It's the face of Paul Rudd.

Post-JCVD, we'll never again be able to think of Van Damme as just another kickboxer turned actor. Van Damme is an actor, pure and simple, and proves that he is just as deft and accomplished as the movies in which he appears.

True artists will risk sacrificing audience goodwill for truth and sentimentality for cold historical reality, but Herman doesn't want your respect; he just wants your tears.

Young children will enjoy this piece of sweet cartoon candy.

It's not often you come across a film as unique as this, and while my taste for liver, lights, and sweetbreads isn't what it once was, this is still a fine post-Halloween aperitif, with guts to spare.

Whenever Soul Men is in need of a jolt of energy, these two poets of profanity are always ready with rapid-fire, mean-spirited rants that would make the writers of "Deadwood" blush.

House has a few moments that ring genuinely eerie, but the cluttered, unconvincing dialogue – not to mention Moseley's ongoing penchant for crazed overacting – make it more of a genre curiousity than anything the "Fangoria" gang would likely want to sit through.

The real shocker is how hellishly yawn-inducing this utterly pointless and forgettable Haunting turns out to be. It's enough to make you scream.

You come away from Splinter feeling it would have made a far more effective short than the feature-length drag it is.

Smith gives the appearance of wanting to provoke, but along with his smuttiness, he wears his heart on his sleeve.

A dull, tired mess.

Overlong, overplotted, and pocked with improbabilities.

The real tragedy of What Just Happened isn’t that it succumbs to predictable pseudo-satirical farce but that when it does, it loses sight of the very thing that could have made it a film worth caring about: the story of a man perpetually caught between art and business, between strength and weakness, between adoration and loneliness, between success and failure, between the movies and reality.

Could be summarized as a vampire tween romance, but that cheap and tawdry sum-up does zero justice to the magnificent emotional resonance of this gemlike bloodstone of a film.

Synecdoche is the kind of movie that rewards repeated viewings. But sometimes, as Van Morrison sings, it's just best to "sail into the mystic."

Eastwood's grim handling of even grimmer subject matter could have used some paring down toward its histrionic ending, but Changeling is still one of the director's most assured and engaging historical horror shows.

But let's be honest: Any actress can do melancholy; it takes a special talent to recognize that there's a certain luxuriousness, a certain joy, to be found in longtime self-hatred.

Truly, the greatest torture of all is boredom.

It's a good thing this movie has been sitting on the shelf for a year or more, because, apart from the difference in release dates, there's little to distinguish this new cop drama from last year's cop drama "We Own the Night."

Teenthrob Efron will be missed in future episodes by both adolescent girls and their moms who are only too happy to accompany their daughters to the theatre, but he's a handsome talent who's graduated to bigger projects.

As we find ourselves again immersed in a time of war, Trumbo's ageless story offers a useful corollary.

In our age of 24-hour news coverage, this rehashing of current events doesn't just come off familiar but completely unnecessary. And, worst of all, prosaic.

With Filth and Wisdom, the Material Girl has now spliced the title of film writer and director into her list of accomplishments, but the result is, well, immaterial.

A film that feels far too familiar for the likes of Wahlberg to juice up, hallucinatory valkyries or no.

Generally works like a drone but sometimes provides glimpses of the queens at the center

It's not "Sixteen Candles," but it's not "Road Trip," either. Instead, this comedic car-trip riff on the teen-male libido and the lengths to which it will go to satisfy itself falls somewhere in between part endearing emo love story, part gross-out semen gag-fest, and, very occasionally, a smart, inspired, non-sequitur-laden hoot.

Ftrangely emotionless. There's little offered in the form of rooting interests or compassionate characterizations, making the film ultimately as ephemeral as its title.