But Pine playing 1960s-era Shatner – sometimes subtly, sometimes not? That's a terrific gag. Really, it is. Totally inspired. It's just not enough to save this otherwise cookie-cutter bromantic comedy from being anything other than what it is: an inoffensive yawn.

This is highly personal artwork writ in a grand, towering script, and all the more intellectually and artistically legible for it.

A persistent narrative thread that pits Flemish-speaking Belgians against French-speaking Belgians will whiz past most American viewers, but hopefully not distract from its overall impact because this movie grabs the bull by the horns and takes viewers on a surprising ride.

Perhaps Sucsy was overwhelmed by his immersion in such colorful and outré material; he's chosen for his followup, the I Can't Believe It's Not Nicholas Sparks weepie The Vow, the cinematic equivalent of a lie-down.

Chronicle may go over the top with its climax, but for such a giddy film, it's remarkably down to earth.

While Man on a Mission doesn't precisely neuter Garriott's weirder ways, it does push them aside for a more boilerplate message of the father/son bond.

The story winds its way over the material, forcing the characters and the viewers to constantly reassess everything they have seen and heard.

Director Espinosa stages the endless action with a tremendous flair that recalls John Woo's grittier moments, and cinematographer Oliver Wood, who shot Woo's finest Hollywood moment, "Face/Off," gives the whole violent show a downright brackish look that borders on the sublime.

Excepting the occasional shot that forces the eye on a particular dancer, Wenders largely films the action in a way that re-creates the effect of attending a performance in a proscenium theatre – only without having to scrabble for the best seat in the house. No matter where you are, you're already in it.

The result is a goofy-weird mishmash of some pretty swell CGI creatures and some downright lousy screenwriting.

What makes The Innkeepers such an unnerving experience isn't the outright horror but rather the lack of it. West mines every single floorboard creek and shadowy corridor for maximum frisson; this film ventures far beyond creepy and into the rarely explored land of genuine, incremental fear.

The film is wonderfully atmospheric and full of little frights, but its overall impact is only glancing.

It's a disturbing film on many, many levels, but beautifully shot (by Seamus McGarvey) and shot through with a horrific sense of false hope. The kid is not all right.

Big Miracle is all formula, but with just enough savvy to temper the gentle-spiritedness and qualify it as that rare family film with an emotional manipulativeness that doesn't leave a sick slick in the mouth.

Wouldn't it make more sense on basic cable? Plum screen incarnate (and film producer) Katherine Heigl got her start in TV, on Roswell and Grey's Anatomy, and her public persona – a combination of prickliness and adoration-seeking that has famously grated on viewers' and critics' nerves alike – has historically played better there.

The film is an intelligent study of the will to live. It's so strong that even a suicidal man rises to the occasion.

There is running, hiding, fighting, shooting, bleeding, biting, slicing, dicing, and damnably little entertainment value in any of it.

Red Tails is both a stirring and simplistic tribute to the men that not only shattered the U.S. Army Air Corps' racial barrier but also saved the lives of many a white, B-17 crew member, all while downing countless numbers of Hitler's formidable, jet-propelled Luftwaffe.

In the end it's all much ado about not so much, a semifunctional thriller that tingles but never terrifies. Ledge schmedge.

Albert Nobbs is the furthest thing from a comedy, although as a character study of cultural mores and stations and the lengths human beings will go to to circumvent them, it's fascinating stuff.

For all its kiss kiss, bang bang, Haywire ends up feeling as hollow as the points on Mallory Kane's 9mm ammo.

As a portrait of what happens to a family when its glue disappears, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wrung a bucket of tears out of me.

If I may presume: Thatcher probably would have preferred more action, less talk.

The cynic in me notes that the whole, dismal enterprise is just a cheap steal from Roger Corman's 1955 film "Day the World Ended." At least that single set-bound cheapie had a three-eyed mutant to enliven the otherwise stagy proceedings.

The script is chockablock with al dente amusements – obvious targets still make for wickedly funny one-liners – and the German actor Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) is terrific as the only parent unburdened by decorum.

Yes, it's a coming-out film, but it breaks that mold by being thoroughly unpredictable. It's a coming-of-age film, too, and by virtue of of telling the story of a young, black lesbian, Pariah also ventures into novel territory for a motion picture.

The film feels about as genuine and spontaneous as its evident lip-synching.

Contraband is a tidy little thriller that makes up in execution what it lacks in originality.