Gone Baby Gone would be an accomplishment with anyone at the helm; from a first-timer, it's a revelation.

The movie Rendition asks, admittedly in a one-sided way, whether the ends justify these means.

The honesty outweighs the hokiness by a fair margin.

It's common in Hollywood to describe a disappointing film this way: "Well, it certainly looks great!"

You can approach it as a surreal story -- you'd have to, to find value in it -- but happy chuckles are miles away from the point.

A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly.

Yet the whole thing is so generic, so been-there-before, that I spent most of it asking myself nitpicking questions. To wit:

To my detached eye, this slender biography suggests that Curtis went from a faintly interested glam-rock wannabe of 16 to a mildly talented performer to a quietly glum fellow of 23 whose frustrations drove him to suicide.

The Farrellys have always danced along the tightrope between funny-disgusting and just plain gross in "There's Something About Mary" and "Shallow Hal." If the ratio was about 50-50 at the best of times, it's now 30-70 in favor of crassness.

Careful casting adds to verisimilitude. Nobody carries off a chilly authority figure like Tilda Swinton, who represents the chemical company; Pollack, who has more or less stopped directing, now embodies urbane amorality as an actor; Wilkinson, whose career has mostly been devoted to repressed or depressed characters, enjoys his turn as a bright-eyed fanatic.

Any of the key relationships would have been grist enough for one movie's mill, but "Feast" crams them all together.

Director Peter Berg and first-time writer Matthew Michael Carnahan do a smooth, efficient job of storytelling most of the way.

Penn, one of Hollywood's most famous iconoclasts, must have felt instinctive sympathy with someone who told the whole world in general to leave him alone.

I can tell you in nine words whether you'll want to see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Writer-director Andrew Dominik wants to be Terrence Malick.

It's almost impossible for a movie to go irrevocably wrong during the opening credits, but the ceaselessly irritating The Jane Austen Book Club does just that.

Journalists have a saying for someone who neglects or downplays the most important part of a news story: He buried the lead. That's what Paul Haggis does with "In the Valley of Elah," which submerges two important storylines beneath a pointless, unsatisfying whodunit.

Mangold has been smart or fortunate in casting, and personalities sustain interest even when the narrative flags.

The movie gets full marks for earning its G rating: no violence, no cursing, no sex or nudity, no drugs, not even a rogue cigarette blotting the landscape. It's easier to achieve this rating when your hero barely speaks and has little consciousness of the adult world, but "Holiday" proves it can be done-and should be more often.

Johansson, hair dyed brown to make her seem less glamorous, spices up this bland role.

About a guy who stood on the brink of greatness but, because of one flaw he could never overcome, had to settle for being pretty good before he faded away. Strange, then, that the movie works exactly the same way.

This combination of tightly controlled farce and gross-out comedy works unexpectedly well, until the filmmakers lose their nerve at last and settle for cozy homilies. Still, four-fifths of a rarity is about twice as much as studios deliver nowadays.

Superbad simply isn't. It isn't super, as it intersperses crudely funny gags with an equal number of dry spots. It isn't ever truly bad, because even the lame segments pass quickly.

In the end, your reaction to "Hour" may depend on your feelings about humanity's collective common sense.

For all its flashes of emotional honesty and mordant humor, is nonsense at its core.

Though the movie's a shade shorter than the first two, it feels longer.

Its sensibility stays true to Gaiman's style: heroic, wryly funny, but bloodthirsty as great fairy tales can often be.

Movies about artists play fast and loose with truth, but this is a hoot.

For once, I didn't feel cheated by an unresolved ending, but let's hope this is the end. Robert Ludlum wrote three Bourne novels, and this is one series that ought not to be dishonored by inferior sequels.