Audiences smart and tough enough to seek the film out will have their own reward.

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 sharp shock of a film in an Awards season very full of movies so noble they become immobile. It's wildly unlikely to get much love from the Academy, and that's fine-bluntly, it's too good for them. With its bloody stew of history and hysteria, action taken from movies and atrocities taken from fact, Django isn't just a movie only America could make-it's also a movie only America needs to.

For fans, this is exactly how the story of Jean Valjean's transformation from thief to saint should be delivered: smothered in bombast.

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.

Apatow has drifted further and further from comedy with every film, but This is 40 is the first where he hasn't even bothered to write any jokes. Instead of snappy dialogue, we get lazy exchanges.

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.

A crime saga cobbled together from scraps of genre predecessors, Deadfall's unbelievable silliness escalates at every turn.

Playing like a mash-up between "Enter the Void" and "The Raid," Day of Reckoning is an uncommonly assured slice of bargain bin cinema, as arresting to watch as it is impossible to comprehend.

A masterwork from a master filmmaker.

What Audiard has created here is nothing less than the rare combination of high art and beautiful filmmaking with visceral power and gut-level emotional reality - it's like a symphony of fists, or a brutal assault by angels.

And so, nearly four years since it rolled cameras, the sun rises on another Red Dawn, which supplements the irresponsibility of the original with an incompetency all its own.

One of the best kid's films of the year, full of delight and action and charm and comedy.

A "Good Evening" indeed at the movies.

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

Every frame of silent, lip-biting, pent-up tension in the series has been holding its breath for this -- a 600-minute soap opera suddenly exploding into a Grindhouse slasher.

The result is a masterpiece of moving pieces, a dizzying and obscenely beautiful film that boils down Tolstoy's text to its most basic elements by making literal the theater of high society.

This is not really a biopic of the great President as the title might indicate, but rather a fascinating, savvy look at the inner-workings of the political process and how things in the White House get - or don't get - done.

It's a real film, and a fun one, made with gonzo good humor and plenty of action from the opening brutal battle over which the sound of The Wu-Tang Clan's 1993 single "Shame on a N***a" roars.

Consider it a force in the Best Animated Film Oscar race.

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.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is the nadir of senseless seasonal cinema. But while Bassett's film struggles to say anything coherently, it gets the most important message across perfectly well: "Do not go to Silent Hill!"

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.

Killing Them Softly tries hard - and succeeds - to be a film of the now with its political parallels right in front of us. Yet it's also an invisible companion to the dirty business at hand - and it is a business.

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.

The emotional journey is articulated with so much nuance, and such a vigorous belief in human possibility, that everything The Surrogate touches becomes its own, and is made new.

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

Sinister is pretty much everything to hate about modern horror in one mixed bag, a ramshackle teardown of jump-scares and creaky tricks, saw-it-coming "surprises" and the lead-footed thud of inevitability as it tediously places one clumsy foot in front of the other, plodding towards a finale that comes far too late.

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.

This is a curio that demands to be seen.

With a razor-sharp script and Jennifer Garner winning laughs in a nice change-of-pace role, this cynically funny and pointedly pertinent not-so-subtle spin on the national battle between right and left wing politics scores lots of comic bullseyes.

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

Alcoholic movie characters run the gamut from lovable millionaire (Arthur) to Skid Row bum (Henry Chinaski from Barfly) to all-out, suicidal depressive (Ben from Leaving Las Vegas). As written and performed, Winstead's Kate triangulates between all these approaches and finds a sincerity that plays to the intellect, not to the rafters.

This magnificent stop-motion cartoon is alive - "it's alive! - with laughs and heart.

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

Arnold's newest testament to passion and squalor strikes a tone somewhere between Cary Fukinaga's emo "Jane Eyre" and Sophia Coppola's revisionist-hip "Marie Antoinette."

Sure it's fun - and painful - but it's not thin.

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.

Rebel Wilson is the peroxided Aussi who stole scenes as Kristen Wiig's roommate in "Bridesmaids," and this is the role that will turn her into a star.

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

There's more to it than a black-and-white political conclusion, and the laundry list of California documentary heroes in the credits suggests this film is humanist before it's agenda driven.

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

Clint Eastwood and a superb cast hit it out of the park in Trouble With The Curve, a great entertainment filled with heart, humor, family drama and fantastic acting.

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

Easily one of the year's best films and one of the best ever in the well-worn cop genre.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is a sweet surprise, a funny, touching terrific and quite wonderful movie that gets it all right about the joys and heartbreaks of growing up circa 1991.

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.

If there was any doubt Ben Affleck has turned into an exceptional director, his wildly entertaining, pulse-pounding thriller Argo will handily erase those thoughts.

Director Rian Johnson's resulting film, a cornfield neo-noir, is the coolest, most-confident sci-fi flick since 2006's "Children of Men."

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.

It seems odd to call a detailed portrait of toxic romance lovely, but Keep the Lights On truly is.

The Master is big screen marvel intended for 70mm projection (a rare treat), with some beautiful imagery, but often inaudible dialogue. Phoenix's lived-in mumble comes off about as clear as Fenster from The Usual Suspects and Amy Adam's precise diction can't even save her harshest talking points.

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.

The more pressing affliction in Pascal Laugier's film is the absence of chills, logic and coherence.

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.

Filled to the brim with top-shelf performances from an impressive cast, and with enough well-executed (and often shocking) violence to keep moviegoers of all stripes wide awake, Lawless is a minor classic in the making.

Even if 2016 is preaching to the choir, its fanbase is eager to tithe - it's spent this week as Fandango's #1 ticket seller.

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.

A darker and more ambitious meditation on impermanence, Samsara relies on blunt force and unforgettable imagery, overcoming the hazy logic of Fricke's editing to earn your awe.

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.

This over-the-top sequel caters to the lowest common denominator in the best possible way, and it's so fully committed to brainless bombast that it muscles audiences to applaud by sheer force of will.

It's Cronenberg's most willfully weird movie since "Spider," and it should prove a tough sell despite Pattinson's ample star power.

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.

Think of it as someone making a peanut butter and chocolate swirl of Mad magazine and The New Yorker - two unique tastes making one great treat.

Deftly veering from comedy to drama, director David Frankel (who also guided Streep to one of her 17 Oscar nominations in "The Devil Wears Prada") never loses sight of the humanity and universality of the situation.

Fox is smart to keep turning this stuff out before star Gordon grows too old for the role. He's terrific in a Leave it to Beaver way, perfectly capturing the angst of being in-betweener.

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.

This movie will not find an audience. It's got likable stars, a reliable commercial genre and a decent supporting cast, but nobody will turn out to see it, even if it was a labor of love.

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

Journalist and director Allison Klayman doesn't mask her awe of the man, who comes off as a cross between a wise Buddha-figure and Santa Claus - he's made for history, and he's making it.

Step Up Revolution has again found some of the most kinetic talents in the country.

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.

This smart and sophisticated romp takes surprising directions as it examines the creative process of writing, the delicate balance of relationships, and the mysteries of men and women.

Red Hook Summer begins as a gentle character comedy and then erupts into a sudden reversal that is possibly the most powerful and disturbing sequence Lee has ever created. It's a film that makes you laugh, weep, rage and gasp, and, love it or hate it, you will definitely talk about it afterward.

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

A fine film in a strong summer, but it lacks the spark that made its immediate predecessor a masterpiece.

The audience for this movie will have to be an adventurous one, and even then a substantial portion will be outraged by what they see.

Greenfield's fly on the wall view of obscene wealth punctured like a toy balloon is as current as a blog or a headline.

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.