This unambitious caper flick takes a while to get moving but gradually develops a modest meat-and-potatoes appeal, compromised in the third act by a whopping and perfectly avoidable plot hole.

Bier's film succeeded on the merits of its actors, and this one offers fine performances by Portman and Gyllenhaal, but Maguire doesn't cut the mustard as the anguished military man.

Reitman deserves credit for going through with a bitterly ironic ending, but the movie is marred by its warm condescension toward flyover country.

This is sentimental but dramatically solid, its placid themes fortified by De Niro.

The current vogue for all things vampiric is ripe for a satirical drubbing, but this repulsive comedy is part of the problem, not the solution.

If you come to this expecting the philosophical depth and psychological detail of Tolstoy’s work you’re sure to be disappointed, but as an actors’ romp it’s delectable.

Overwrought indie crime drama.

It's an interesting film but not enthralling, a little like Steven Soderbergh's "Bubble" minus the element of crime.

Walks a fine line between the quotidian and the absurd, but falls short of a satisfying payoff.

Portrayed ad infinitum in sci-fi and fantasy, the postapocalypse may now seem about as scary as Post Raisin Bran, but Hillcoat gives it an unnerving solidity by focusing on the drab details of survival and linking them to the more hellish aspects of modern American life.

A welcome return to the Disney tradition of 2-D animation, this lively musical spices up Hans Christian Andersen's "The Frog Prince" by transplanting it to New Orleans in the early 20th century.

Soulless, hyperbolic actioner.

A total train wreck.

The script lacks wit, and the in-joke references to cinematic sci-fi classics will soar over little kids' heads without pleasing many adults.

The movie's script and production values represent a big step up from the nearly unwatchable predecessor and make it suitable viewing even for people who aren't Twilight nerds.

The story is inspiring and involves sports, but to call it an inspirational sports story would be wrong; its real center is Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock in a fine performance), the strong-willed woman whose love and generosity helped turn a mute, hopeless boy with no social or academic skills into a functioning young man with a promising future.

Herzog deserves the lion's share of the credit for the movie's quality, but Port of Call New Orleans is also a comeback for Cage.

This melancholy romance is the first Almodovar feature I’ve ever really liked, an expertly fashioned melodrama that steers mercifully clear of his usual puckishness and star-mongering.

Moodysson’s meticulous attention to surfaces allows him to draw a stark contrast between the Americans’ affluence and the Asians’ poverty, but his final observation--that somehow the rich will muddle through--is hardly a bold statement.

This 2005 masterpiece by Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov transforms the story of Emperor Hirohito at the close of World War II into a melancholy meditation on power and its loss.

Spectacular CGI disasters.

The result is an instant classic. The material allows Anderson to neutralize the most irritating aspects of his work (the precociousness, the sense of white-bread privilege) and maximize the most endearing (the comic timing, the dollhouse ordering of invented worlds).

Whenever writer-director Oren Moverman moves past these scattered and admittedly voyeuristic moments into the lives of the two soldiers, the movie drifts into received wisdom and unconvincing romance.

A hodgepodge of half-baked characters and story ideas, stoked by a frantic climax and a blue-chip playlist of 1966 rock classics.

For his third feature, Richard Kelly delivers neither a triumph (like his first, Donnie Darko) nor a travesty (like his second, Southland Tales) but a sure-handed genre piece that manages to wrap up before its plot mushrooms completely out of control.

This drama about an obese, illiterate black teen in Harlem practically guarantees some emotional uplift. But when it arrives, eventually, its authority is unimpeachable, so deeply has director Lee Daniels (Monster's Ball) immersed us in the depths of human ugliness.

Osunsanmi's big formal innovation tunrs out to be the split-screen pairing of patently bogus "archival" black-and-white video that shows alleged abductees undergoing hypnosis and color "reenactments" of same. Ultimately it's up to you, the viewer, to decide which is more boring.

Zemeckis captures all the story’s terror, but its pathos has always been the real challenge, and it mostly eludes him.