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.