The key selling point is Bayona's ten-minute reenactment of the tidal wave and its carnage, which is brutal, visceral and without peer. His visual mastery is almost enough to make up for The Impossible's conventional final hour and the empty feeling of trying to find the point of this whole exercise.

On the Road is rich with evocative period atmosphere and anchored by a trio of compellingly lived-in performances from Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, and Kristen Stewart. Nevertheless, it's another staid adaptation that misses the forest for the trees and confuses people into thinking that some novels truly are "unfilmmable."

A competent period costume drama, this intimate character study is light as air - and probably more suited to Masterpiece Theatre than as a major theatrical release.

The Hobbit is just good enough to make you aware of how it could have been much, much better. If you take your kids-while shielding them from various nonhuman bad guys getting decapitated both repeatedly and, worse, bloodlessly-they'll have a good time. Bilbo Baggins' quest for adventure and Warner Bros' quest for cash will take him through three films. But your quest for epic, truly entertaining filmmaking will be more successful if you just stay home.

It's not much, but adult audiences starved for mature entertainment should be counted on to investigate this flawed, if admittedly heartfelt, work.

With a sure-to-be-talked about performance by Sean Penn and the dueling themes of overcoming depression and revenge against Nazi atrocities, This Must Be The Place is anywhere BUT the place for moviegoers who aren't in the mood for something different.

In 1994, 16-year-old surfer Jay Moriarity braved the biggest waves ever seen off the coast of Northern California. His biopic, Chasing Mavericks, gets that fact right but changes everything else about his life in order to bowl audiences over in a saccharine tsunami.

Fun Size isn't good enough to ascend to those John Hughesian ranks, and its small holiday window means it won't scarf much box office. But at least first time feature director Josh Schwartz can expect a minor slumber party hit on DVD.

While director Sam Mendes, aided and abetted by a crack technical team, delivers big-screen action with panache and style, something about this Bond feels a little off.

Paranormal Activity 4 may mean more of the same, but in a modern horror landscape too often made up of equal parts of gore and boredom and resigned straight-to-video, it's a chiller designed to be seen in a crowded theater, and that alone makes it superior to its peers.

Rebooting novelist James Patterson's famous Alex Cross character for the big screen, Tyler Perry aims at new cinematic territory and scores a bullseye as the Detroit detective embroiled in a hunt for a mega-evil killer that turns personal.

The movie version has the exciting and challenging parts down but the moral awakening it so strenuously wants us to experience remains beyond its reach.

Zemeckis intends to give us a slightly more depraved version of Washington's usual charismatic hero, then pull the rug out from him. But Flight's true downward spiral is its own loss of momentum.

Like James in the ring, it doesn't pack a lot of power, but it comes out swinging and sweats for applause.

A cleverly daft meta-romp that will be best remembered for its quotes, Seven Psychopaths is a game and garishly shot production that's elegant in its own seedy way.

Taken 2 is 91 minutes of "See Neeson kill-kill, Neeson kill!"

Ang Lee's adaptation of Yann Martel's mega-selling novel Life Of Pi is technically adept, mildly engaging and thematically pedantic.

Won't Back Down makes grand drama of bureaucracy, positioning Gyllenhaal as the knight slaying 400 pages of government paperwork in order to wrest control of her daughter's elementary school. It's rousing - if not thrilling - stuff.

No surprises or major laughs here, but as far as Sandler family fare goes, it's inoffensive enough.

This PG-13 scare-fest is more psychological terror than blood and guts, and should satisfy-not repulse-young genre fans.

The stylish sci-fi film makes some eye-popping and unexpected choices that add up to one heck of a fun film.

If it's true that movies can transport you to places you could hardly have imagined, then Resident Evil: Retribution is the cinema's ultimate passport to purgatory.

Though rife with clichés, Starry Starry Night has just enough nostalgic melancholy and quiet whimsy to make its coming-of-age narrative and elegy to childhood emotionally and visually compelling.

An industry that's lost 90% of its silent films and which has consistently demonstrated - montage lip-service aside - a staggering lack of interest in its own history can hardly be trusted to transfer films from format to format and keep them intact, let alone in good shape.

The result is an initial comedic buzz, but the further these women plunge into hot water - and are forced to confront their personal and professional hang-ups - the more the story turns screechy and obnoxious.

Paco Plaza turns his [REC] franchise on its rotting head with [REC]3: Genesis, switching up the series' blistering first-person-perspective terror for a more conventional, jokey and-much to the film's detriment-self-conscious approach.

With an incredible performance by young Natasha Calls and surprisingly effect direction by Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch) you'll be surprised how this horror gets you just when you think you're safe.

The song and dance interaction of kids hollering advice during Blue's Clues happens here on the big screen, which is meant to transform the movie into a social event of sorts.

Tsui Hark's films aren't famous for their coherence, but Flying Swords of Dragon Gate is such a wantonly incomprehensible experience that it occasionally feels like an epic piece of outsider art.

A movie whose confusing narrative and at times intriguing parts are at war with each other, and never quite gel.

The soulless-ness of their empty plot of track homes and super-store existence invokes both "Poltergeist" and "Employee of the Month."

Premium Rush has a rewarding relentlessness and a payoff that suggests that whirring city that surrounds us in is full of supporters who see past the system.

One of the summer's great escapes - no mean feat in a year that has attempted, but failed, to provide fun, mindless, movie fare.

The Words is a movie for people who buy their novels at Starbucks, made by people who write their novels at Starbucks.

The shadow of Whitney Houston's stardom and crushing recent death hang heavy over this midrange movie that promises its female audience at least three good cries during its somewhat overlong run time.

It's a magical film in the vein of E.T. where an otherworldly event changes a family forever.

The film is light-fingered and charming.

ParaNorman is easily one of the most charming, imaginative and quirky comedies to come out of Laika Entertainment (Coraline), but for all its cleverness and urbane wit, it's in no way appropriate for kids.

The Bourne Legacy doesn't reach the heights of the previous three films, but a guns-blazing final act and strong performances from its entire cast might give it the juice to try for a fifth sequel.

It isn't a problem that 2 Days in New York is implausibly stuffed with incident for a movie that transpires over the course of just 48 hours, the trouble lies in how much time it still manages to waste.

Hardcore genre fans will likely be quite disappointed to find a film that trades vision and originality for something best described as bland and inoffensive.

Killer Joe isn't as outlandish in premise as it is in execution, which is saying something.

As broad as a barn yet as thin as paper, The Watch is a summertime action-comedy that works almost in spite of its overcrowded cast and loose, pulpy spitball of a plot.

A true crime tale with added layers of intrigue and atmosphere.

The premise is fetching and feels like a mystery, particularly as the film orchestrates its story to make the work of the Alps group seem like a kind of heist.

Quality evidently not being a concern, Ice Age: Continental Drift is nonetheless a slight improvement over its predecessor.

Betrayals will occur and loyalties will be tested, but it's the audience that ends up ripped off.

Part of Me strains so hard to make Perry seem at once triumphant but totally relatable that it veers toward a self-seriousness you won't find in her music, image or Hershey's Kiss bra.

Beyond the Black Rainbow is the kind of movie whose cool-looking trailer entices you to midnight screenings, but the film will bore you so profoundly you'll fall asleep halfway and wake up disoriented during the closing credits.

Perry's latest is crudely assembled and mostly emotionally unengaging.

Fans of the 66-year-old guitar god (which is to say the only people who'll see this homespun gem) will revel in Young's winsome cruise down Memory Lane.

Like "Anvil," this is a crowd-pleasing triumph of the spirit, framed around a story so bizarre it sounds like an urban legend.

Williams embodies Margot's inner turmoil with an unfussy sense of terrified instability.

It's not nearly as snappy or campy as it should be-though its self-seriousness is its own kind of entertainment.

There's no denying the film's refrain that legends are lessons, but Brave is sadly remedial.

That's My Boy has the same freewheeling appeal and potty-mouthed, go-for-broke mania of Sandler's earlier comedies. But there's a new undercurrent of energy that's likely the consequence of Sandler separating from his usual collaborators.

It's a great (if middle-of-the-road) family comedy to seek out.

He's either daring you not to laugh or daring you not to care, but either way, you'll laugh, care and worry about the consequences in Dark Horse.

Not sure if you'll enjoy Safety Not Guaranteed? Here's a quick litmus test: how do you feel about watching Mark Duplass, accompanying himself on zither (!), singing a heartfelt song about how "everyone in the big machine tries to break your heart?"

Lola Versus arrives with a pedigree that suggests it should be better than it sounds. It isn't.

Beneath the hype and promises, however, it's almost a letdown that the actual film is merely very good: a better-than-average 3D big-budget space tale.

It's hard to imagine who will thrill to this violent, gorgeous, and empty film.

It seems impossible that a sequel to a movie as ridiculous as "Piranha 3D" could disappoint but Piranha 3DD stops at mediocre before arriving at gloriously bad.

Men in Black 3 is exactly what you'd expect: amiable mediocrity and nicely laid-back performances with pricy special effects plugging in the gaps where jokes should be.

A film about how outwardly alienating our circles are (much to the detriment of our careers) and how caustic our supposedly nurturing intimacies can be at the same time.

What to expect from What to Expect When You're Expecting: laughs, heart and a terrific ensemble of actors doing what they do best.

Actress and director Maïwenn Le Besco (a.k.a. Maïwenn) confounds expectations by drawing together a heart-thumping patchwork of dramas and emotions.

Though the film is a fairly plastic British period piece with all the intimacy of a Hitachi Wand, the script captures some delicate and intelligent facets of a tensely conflicted era.

This archly self-aware coming-of-age tale fizzles, as the targeted Latino audience is upstaged by a culture more firmly rooted in the film's soggy Seattle setting.

It has its moments, although the charmless main character Julio (played by Diego Noguera) begins to get on your nerves, as he seems incapable of extricating himself from difficult situations.

A coming of age story in which the children better the world for the adults, Kore-Eda's heart is in the right place.

Likely to disappoint both literary aficionados and action-thriller fans, the film neither captures the creepy atmospheres of Poe's influential writing nor works on its own.

Safe bangs along respectably enough, all thrown fists and cheeky comments, but it never feels like more than a second-tier video game brought to life.

It's the sheer lack of investment one feels for the couple that truly sabotages the film.

Bernie is an interesting guy, but he doesn't make for very good company.

The bad news is that if you haven't seen "Thor," "Captain America" and "Iron Man 2" - that's six hours and three minutes of homework - The Avengers won't make sense. The good news is if you're a human under the age of 45, you probably already have.

The emotions are flat, predictable and forced when they ought to be romantic.

Sure you could just go and rent the original DVDs, but this kind of gut-busting, hit 'em in the groin humor is still funny as hell, especially in the hands of the Farrelly Brothers.

Still, the fans are lovable no matter how mixed the Comic-Con bag is, and Morgan Spurlock is precisely the doc maker to tell us about it.

Piccoli in a role that relies on looks, gestures and very few words, does not hit an off note, making him into a silent, everyman figure.

While the scenario has all the smirking charm of Stillman's earlier movies, the sobering realities of off-campus life are never even alluded to, and the humor of insularity eventually becomes stifling.

Graceful cinematography captures the loneliness and isolation of these kids with understatement, even when the director succumbs to twinkling piano that pulls a tad too hard on the heartstrings.

Strictly for kids, but pure movie fun nonetheless,

Wrath of the Titans delivers blockbuster bluster with single-minded blandness.

It is the boy's tough exterior and lack of self-pity that binds the narrative together, making this one of the Dardennes' most appealing undertakings.

While A Thousand Words features some reverent flashes and even has the potential to touch audiences (a moment involving a mother with Alzheimer's particularly hits home), it suffers from being too broad.

The film's biggest (and saddest) crime is malaise - it's not that John Carter doesn't care about what it's doing, it just can't make us care, even though the magnitude of every event, conflict and emotion is as melodramatic as its Victorian roots.

A shrewdly understated satire of feel-good dramas disguised as gross-out inside jokes, Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie should alternately leave some viewers in stitches while making others quickly leave the theater.

Silent House is undeniably built on its "one-shot, real-time" gimmick. And while it works reasonably well - especially in the first half of the film - it's still just a gimmick trying to gussy up a common horror flick.

The film's strength isn't its shock tactics - it's the rapid-fire, party montage editing that finds a million natural ways to put mundane actions and moments up against each other for comic effect.

Gone starts off as a character study about a woman struggling to regain control of her world in the wake of a horribly intrusive event, but that sort of thing doesn't make for a fun night at the movies, so it quickly concedes to a Hitchcockian "wrong woman" riff, in which sexually motivated abduction serves as the worst MacGuffin in movie history.

Shows remarkable access to military materials and personnel but, as a film, is unremarkable every other way.

While "Role Models" mined riches even in the well-plowed comedic soil of cretins befriending kids, Wanderlust's equally musty city-vs-country culture clash plot finds only flecks of hilarity in mostly bland-to-bold mediocrity.

So it's a half-certainty, half-shock that Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is both good and bad, a sequel that's hungry for thrills but bereft of the cohesiveness - and budget - to be a full meal.

This is one of the super rare docs that packs an unbelievable punch despite its misguided aesthetics. It's a strange triumph of content over form, which is the province of journalists to report.

A dating fantasy for girls and an action bromance for guys, This Means War wins the Valentine date crowd in swoops and strokes, but does it lead to swoons? Not really.

A messy if initially intriguing take on sci-fi-underpinned high school angst for the vlogging age, Chronicle eventually grows repetitive and stale.

Safe House isn't the most original of plots - it feels like a loose amalgamation of ten other spy flicks - but director Espinosa infuses his production with some bold choices, both in terms of technics and twists.