Surrogate fathers and family values are at the foreground, making the film a quick sell to parents - especially as it boasts the added value of literary roots.

It's a stirring mix of sports and human drama that exudes an almost earthy sense of genuineness.

The Dish and The Spoon boasts the efficiency and tidiness of early American indies like Rob Nilsson's "Heat and Sunlight," while it relocates its foreign film-like emotional landscapes to more native climes.

The blistering tunes and unique animation compensate for the rather unconvincing central love story that works best as a Forrest Gump-ian device to highlight some legendary real-life musicians.

The result is an odd, very personal film that the pop star-turned-director has made with tender loving care, but the results of the final final film are mixed.

Inspiring, real and heartwarming, Big Miracle is something of a miracle itself - a family film everyone in the family can love that doesn't talk down to its audience and makes more salient political points than "Free Willy" or "Dolphin Tale."

A credible suspense story with a surprisingly bold ending, The Woman In Black is a solid step away from Harry Potter for star Daniel Radcliffe - while it, too, is British and fantastical, the tone is sinister, adult and bleak.

It's a mood piece more than a conventional documentary and it should do comfortably above average business on the theatrical documentary circuit, particularly given its location on the list of Oscar nominated documentaries.

It's full of really subtle dichotomies and internal conflicts, but what makes Julius' story seem authentic is how totally incongruous it feels.

Meticulously thoughtful and economical in its execution, from its camerawork to its editing, Farhadi's carefully wrought narrative and the ways it handles the fragile emotions of its characters truly sets it apart, not only from contemporary Iranian cinema but world cinema in general.

In Darkness takes its place among the many great European films to tackle the subject. Plenty of quality-seeking adult moviegoers will be lured to the arthouse and thoroughly moved.

Director David Mackenzie's quietly accomplished film straddles the arthouse world and cult movies with a unique poetic vision.

Kill List is a major breakthrough for writer/director Ben Wheatley, whose assured and painstaking handling of this difficult material makes for an unforgettable viewing experience.

So Watching TV is less a story loosely bound by cause and effect than a kind of scrapbook of memories, all of which convey the concerns of being super smart and mostly confused in a culturally mixed Manhattan, circa 1980. The affection is sweet and precise, if even the terms we use to define them aren't.

Instead of venturing into mournful "Terms of Endearment" territory, the film - and the filmmakers - commit to a relentless determination to live.

One for the Money is as static and ugly as romantic-comedies get, the distractingly fragmented coverage of simple dialogue scenes suggesting a general ineptitude that's rare at the studio level.

Repression is one thing, but discontent generally breeds self-knowledge and rich interior lives, two things that are eerily absent here. Regardless, the film features some really intriguing conflicts and solid performances throughout.

Clichés and thin thrillers are what we can expect from January releases and while Man on a Ledge has predictability to spare, it also has something that makes your time spent worthwhile: legitimate suspense.

Kate Beckinsale can still fill out a skin-tight leather bodysuit, but with Awakening, the vampires-vs-werewolves Underworld franchise has finally decayed beyond the point of repair.

Such a story is made to be colored in jumbo crayon, and at first you might long for a more nuanced approach, but this film was produced in the 1940's serial style that's made Lucas Films enormous.

Gerardo Naranjo's fourth feature Miss Bala is one long slow burn with no final bang.

This is admirably ambitious, but Carnahan's not nearly good enough a writer or director to pull it off: the results are portentous, muddled and not nearly as entertaining as Neeson's usual face-punching antics.

Streamlined, beautifully shot and casually thrilling, Haywire's superior action fun should hopefully draw audiences eager for R-rated, no-frills fare.

A well-meaning production that consistently fails to deliver on even the most basic of cinematic expectations, all while covering up stunning ineptitude with bloated song-and-dance numbers.

This Americanized version of the 2008 Nordic thriller "Reykjavik Rotterdam" transfers the original's gritty, violent action into an entertaining and intense starring role for Mark Wahlberg.

The mother/daughter drama should have played a bigger part in this film as the 87-minute runtime passes quickly and leaves us feeling utterly short-changed.

Ultimately an inspiring, stirring and unforgettable human drama in the face of a horrifying war. It is highly recommended.

The Darkest Hour isn't just a dark horse contender for the year's biggest joke, it's the darkest.

A thing of endless contrivances. Jolie's phony plotting and graphic depictions of sexual assault and murder are transparent attempts to bluntly convey the war's atrocities.

Where the actress succeeds, all but disappearing into the role of Thatcher, the rest of the film is a bizarre amalgamation of archival footage, half-baked montages, hallucinations that push the bounds of poetic license straight into the gray area of bad taste, and plain old tedium.

It's an emotional powerhouse of a film, an unforgettable and rewarding motion picture experience.

Director Steven Spielberg doesn't have a steady grip on War Horse's careening tone, but he'll be damned if there's not 15 minutes in there for everyone.

Chipwrecked is the sort of Sunday afternoon trifle that will mollify children and mortify their parents, an eyesore that auto-tunes its strong cast into anonymity and undercuts its convincingly rendered CG leads by confining them to hideously cheap environments.

Director Guy Ritchie is like a Heismann-winning football player cast in a ballet stage-perfectly talented, but wrong for the circumstance.

You'll be happier with the film if you don't expect fidelity to source material, but that doesn't mean you'll hate it if you loved Niels Arden Oplev's movie.

The messy uplift audiences can expect from this butterfly awakening they'll get in spades.

Uncomfortably tense but worth savoring, particularly because of Tilda Swinton's devastating lead performance.

Even with a big name cast that includes three Oscar winners - Halle Berry, Robert De Niro and Hilary Swank - New Year's Eve is at best a pleasant diversion.

The Sitter clocks in at a slim 81 minutes, but it feels significantly longer, as there is almost no fluidity between scenes, with the entire outing feeling slapped together at the last minute.

Mission: Impossible 4 is so well-made and smooth you may need to see it more than once to truly appreciate its brains and nerves and blood.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the intellectual action flick of your dreams.

An uneven mix of middle-age anxiety and family comedy.

Overall it's a game effort but despite its strong ambitions and provocative themes, Shame may leave you just like its main protagonist - in need of a very cold shower.

Aimed at kids, Arthur Christmas could be a little trying if you're over 10, but if you want an easygoing flick to get you into the mood for the holidays you could do a lot worse.

Cody's snappy, spot-on writing and Reitman's clear-eyed direction should suit audiences looking for a black-as-night dramedy with bite.

Magical and imaginative, this eye-popping masterpiece from director Martin Scorsese will transport audiences to a place they won't believe.

The holiday season just got a whole lot brighter.

Sex and abortion are the main topics of this installment, which tips between dullness and total camp.

This new round of toe-tapping musical numbers from the penguin population is shot in eye-poppingly gorgeous 3D.

With a powerhouse cast that also includes Steve Buscemi, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon and Ice Cube, the carefully crafted and trenchant drama will appeal to more audience members than it will to critics.

Michael Fassbender (Fishtank, Inglourious Basterds) is reliably great, severely outclassing costar Knightley's grating performance.

The film's charm and delight of discovery, plus its sterling international performances, could make it a breakout hit in theaters.

Jack and Jill is a barrage of fart jokes and fat jokes and mean jokes that sincerely thinks it deserves to end with a hug. It doesn't deserve awwwws - and it doesn't deserve your money.

Spectacle and spectacular are often confused for one another in stories of epic adventure, but Immortals is the rare film where they are one and the same.

Between Eastwood's direction and Dustin Lance Black's screenplay, what you feel leaking off the screen in every scene is missed opportunity.

Has enough laughs, enough good will and enough squirrely strangeness to make you hope that we get to hold on for one more film.

A highly entertaining and heartfelt action comedy that ought to steal more laughs than any other film this holiday season.

Void of subtlety and the gritty realism that's trademark for many Sundance dramas, Another Happy Day, from Mandalay Vision, may fail to win over many critics due to its histrionic storytelling.

Too silly to be confusing and too flaccid to reach potboiler status, the convoluted spy-thriller The Double is a tossed-off theatrical release that lands with a resounding thud.

The pace is solid and engaging without putting you on the edge of your seat-you won't be looking at your watch, which means it's at least worth the time spent.

The Rum Diary is so visually enchanting that many viewers may be too lost in a haze of charm to care that the film never develops Thompson's then-nascent wisdom any further than the young writer did in the novel itself.

The second half, though, simply descends into chaotic banality as the sisters await their fate.

With the best use of motion capture yet, Spielberg has translated the story of the youthful Tintin, his spirited pooch Snowy and the eccentric Captain Haddock into a first class action adventure that serves as the perfect cross between "Pirates of the Caribbean" and Spielberg's own "Indiana Jones" series.

What this predictable tale lacks in surprises it more than makes up for in charm, good music and the indelible performances of Alessandro Nivola and Abigail Breslin as father and child.

A surprising follow-up to Doremus' low-fi but equally concept-driven 2010 Sundance feature "Douchebag," Like Crazy has appealing performances, a notable tone of realism in the acting and so many borrowed mannerisms from better or more interesting films it feels like a YouTube mash-up made by a Wes Anderson junkie who's studying Sophia Coppola movies while writing a term paper on "Garden State."

The results are so funny and irresistible audiences are bound to be swept away into this kitty's universe.

OKA!, like the mysterious horn the characters hunt, is a real find.

Trash-action director Paul W.S. Anderson's (Alien vs. Predator) finds no cultural purpose for this rather literal adaptation of the Musketeers, but it's not so horrible it deserved to be protected from the cold eye of film critics.

Segal's film tries to straddle the line between darkly funny and just plain dark, but even with a game cast and an offbeat premise, Norman is a disquieting outing with little in the way of honest payoff.

The mix of groin injury and over-explanation could totally reach 9-year-olds and a greying Atkinson is still relentlessly lovable.

The more traditional haunted house feel and fresh focus should please diehards and pull in new fans.

The Big Year turns out to be one of the smartest and funniest films this year.

Offers audiences a similar-but-not-the-same mix of effects, existentialism and creepy body horror while forgetting the things like character, humor and tension that made Carpenter's take on the same material so memorable past the initial fearsome fluid flesh sequences.

The results are perfunctory, lugubrious and historically questionable.

Martha Marcy May Marlene enters so richly into psychological horror it recalls those disturbing dramatizations of Jonestown that were big on TV in the '80s.

As tales of troubled families go, it may have aspirations to be like "Ordinary People," but it falls way short.

Leigh certainly has a sense of cinematic style and Emily Browning possesses a fragile beauty that hides a remarkably resilient interior. It's a pity, however, that Jane Campion did not exert a more powerful sway on the result.

It's a trenchant modern western and fans of the genre should embrace it for more reasons than just the presence of the epic Sam Shepard who, by the way, owns this Butch Cassidy.

Why is Emmerich elbowing his way into the conversation about Shakespearean authorship? Because the debate is explosive - and he can't resist packing on a few more pounds of dynamite on his confident drama of incest, greed and beheadings.

From start to finish, Brewer's remake exudes the look and style of its forebearers: semi-awkward dance choreography, clunky dialogue and an obedience to formula that borders on cliché. But somehow, it works.

A fascinating, deeply felt film of wild, untamed emotions and probing insights.

Relatively light-hearted for a Polanski film (no one dies), Carnage is fun verbal warfare cleanly filmed.

Although the marketing looks like "Transformers 4," Real Steel is the real deal, a Rocky with robots that ought to have audiences standing up and cheering.

Nasty and over the top, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) feels like a horror movie that hates horror fans.

The real problem is, when the film blindsides us with a mystery we didn't know existed, we're already too busy not caring about mystery we knew was there.

Ugly characterizations and simplistic preachiness negate the terror in Red State - a film that eventually proves horrific in ways unintended by writer/director Kevin Smith.

Filmmakers Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez don't use flashy tricks to tug heartstrings-instead they put faith in the story they're telling. And what a story it is.

Some audience members will come out for What's Your Number? for Faris' appeal and likability, but they'll leave disappointed because this film is more interested in showing her physical assets than her comedic ones.

There is a passionate, combative and riveting documentary to be made about the plight of the American schoolteacher, but unfortunately the well-meaning, unfailingly decent and overly slack American Teacher isn't it.

Shannon makes the man's dilemma plain and moving, and that gives Take Shelter a resonance that last long after the final fade out.

As divisive as his documentary "Kurt and Courtney," this made-for-British-TV doc by Nick Broomfield begins with the promise of neutrality - but it's a promise the film can't keep.

The new film Abduction has a lot of problems, but the biggest is the fact that no one gets abducted. Ever.

Puncture is rarely more convincing than the usual legal saga.

We all have to make jokes around the water cooler, and if enough people bother to see Killer Elite, its silly nonsense could make for a great comedy routine by Greg from IT.

Call it Prosthetic Flipper, but the truly inspiring Dolphin Tale is perfect family entertainment.

It's never boring but the relentless twists do get a bit tedious.

The exploitation title may not do it any favors, but this biopic based on the incredible life journey of Sam Childers is gripping, inspirational and well told.

If Peckinpah's original was a rotten plank spiked with rusty nails, Rod Lurie's redo is something closer to a nicely carved Louisville Slugger.