A rich, smart, funny, sometimes acidic portrayal of a couple who can be spectacular when they’re in tune — and toxic when they’re at each other’s throats.

This is a slick con, all flash and no substance. Now You See Me seems awfully sure of itself, with self-important, intrusive music, sweeping tracking shots and actors chewing up the scenery.

Quite simply, this is one of the worst films of 2013.

Thymaya Payne's Stolen Seas is a documentary of such ambitious scope that you might need a remote control and a notebook to keep up with it.

While never losing its visual dazzle-factor, Epic keeps returning to overly familiar themes and characters.

Against all odds, the billion-dollar “Fast & Furious” franchise is actually picking up momentum, with “FF6” clocking in as the fastest, funniest and most outlandish chapter yet.

Director Todd Phillips has delivered a film so different from the first two, one could even ask if this is even supposed to be a comedy. I'm not saying it's an unfunny comedy wannabe; I'm saying it plays more like a straightforward, real-world thriller with a few laughs than a hard-R slapstick farce.

Kim deals with an ancient suspicion of money that predates Marx, MasterCard and Madoff.

Yet with all the futuristic splendor and the suitably majestic score and the fine performances, “Into Darkness” only occasionally soars, mostly settling for being a solid but unspectacular effort that sets the stage for the next chapter(s).

While Peeples follows a very predictable course as a romantic comedy and does not break any ground in that genre of filmmaking, this movie is more engaging than you might expect.

After a while, it seems to run out of places to go, but for most of its running time, it’s a wickedly clever divertissement.

Assayas looks back on the values and priorities of the time with a vision that’s both wry and tender.

Amidst all the fireworks and the cascading champagne and the insanely over-the-top parties, we’re reminded again and again that The Great Gatsby is about a man who spends half a decade constructing an elaborate monument to the woman of his dreams.

Kon-Tiki reminds us how important it is to expand our horizons by making discoveries, exploring new worlds and pushing ourselves to the absolute limits of human endurance.

Deliberately ambiguous, The Reluctant Fundamentalist provides just enough answers while leaving us with more than enough questions. It's a film that demands discussion afterward.

Morales trafficks in familiar formulas of an everyman in a bind with evil men. What sets Graceland apart are the conflicted values of its characters.

Thanks to Downey’s genius, Iron Man 3 is equally terrific, whether Tony’s fending off an army of villains or bantering with a kid in a shed on a cold, snowy night.

The first-rate Italian comedy Reality — which fakes Pope Benedict appearing in St. Peter’s Square — likens consecration to elevating an “everyman” to pop celebrity.

Scott keeps the story from becoming cloying and sentimental. He is aided by smart, low-key work from his cast, especially Huard, who easily embodies the persona of an adult slacker, instilling him with a warm charm.

The film indulges in sentimental and sensational tropes. The manipulative touches do more than dis­­­­­­tract, they irk. This story could have been retold without resorting to all the unfortunate formulas used in prime-time and cable fare.

Panic about pop culture is not new. Yet Antiviral finds a novel angle of attack.

Language of a Broken Heart has the Lifetime Network written all over it. It’s a fitting entry for that venue but as a theatrical feature, it’s simply not up to the task.

Bourdos’ high-minded aspirations are obvious, but his visually satisfying film is dramatically elusive.

First-time feature director Dante Ariola (working from a script by Becky Johnson) has a good feel for these characters and keeps things moving along at a brisk pace.

Director Kasper Barfoed defaults to intense replays of surveillance audio recordings, frantic strokes on computer keyboards, and standard-issue chases.

It is a full-bodied silent film of the sort that might have been made by the greatest directors of the 1920s, if such details as the kinky sadomasochism of this film's evil stepmother could have been slipped past the censors.

This is a brave, layered film that challenges the wisdom of victory at any price. Both of its central characters would slip easily into conventional plot formulas, but Bahrani looks deeply into their souls and finds so much more.

There’s not a bad performance in this movie. De Niro, Keaton and Sarandon are particularly good, what a surprise. But it feels as if all the guests at “The Big Wedding” are wearing ID tags telling us their one Plot Point.

Even though Pain & Gain does indeed mine laughs from some very violent acts, there is nothing in this movie that glamorizes those three meatheads. Kudos to Bay and his screenwriters for making sure we’re laughing at them, not with them.

It’s a visually arresting movie. But as the plot layers are peeled back, and we’re given one answer after another, Oblivion actually becomes less interesting.

This film is a documentary about the young man's devilment. He seems perfectly happy — ecstatic, even — seated at a table in front of a three-sided mirror and practicing card moves over and over and over again. As a kid, he learned moves from his grandfather. He moved away from home in his early teens.

The movie’s funniest touches are quiet flashes of character, expertly timed and nimbly played by a deft ensemble. It’s a Disaster is consistently funny, but you wince more often than you laugh out loud. It’s like a Christopher Guest improvisational farce with the volume turned down to 5.

42 is competent, occasionally rousing and historically respectful — but it rarely rises above standard, old-fashioned biography fare. It’s a mostly unexceptional film about an exceptional man.

Despite Redford's sure-handed (but typically stolid) direction, an intriguing premise and a cast filled with top-line talent both veteran and relatively new, nearly every scene had me asking questions about what just transpired when I should have been absorbing what was happening next.

Even when Disconnect follows the path we expect it to follow, it does so in a way that keeps us intensely engaged. There wasn't a moment during this movie when I thought about anything other than this movie.

There will be many who find To the Wonder elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.

Loach's realism always carries a distinct sense of humor, volatility and, most alarmingly in this hypercapitalist new century, a socialist passion for The People.

Trouble is, the Room 237 conspirators — er, contributors — don't seem to realize that those meanings are either not hidden, not meanings or not remotely supported by the secret evidence they think they've uncovered.

A romance, a thriller, and a science-fiction drama, Upstream Color tantalizes viewers with an open-ended narrative about overcoming personal loss.

This isn't a strict remake of Sam Raimi's hugely influential 1981 horror classic, but it does include the basic framework and some visual nods to the original. On its own, it's an irredeemable, sadistic torture chamber reveling in the bloody, cringe-inducing deaths of some of the stupidest people ever to spend a rainy night in a remote cabin in the woods.

The description sounds like a real-life fish-out-of-water tale crossed with a sports movie. But the film wants to be more than that, and I'm on the fence about how well it succeeds.

The movie is flimsy, glib, and occasionally pretty funny.

The artistry is peaceful and comforting to the eyes but not especially stirring. Given the pictorial extremes that Studio Ghibli has gone to in the past, "Up on Poppy Hill" is weak tea.

The Sapphires is clearly a labor of love for all involved. It's also a warm tribute to four women for whom success as performers was just the beginning.

The music, the cinematography, the acting choices, the daring plot leaps — not a single element is timid or safe...The Place Beyond the Pines earns every second of its 140-minute running time.

The Host is top-heavy with profound, sonorous conversations, all tending to sound like farewells. The movie is so consistently pitched at the same note, indeed, that the structure robs it of possibilities for dramatic tension.

The dialogue and exposition scenes in G.I. Joe are like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon from the 1980s, but the PG-13 violence is a little intense for the 7-year-old boys (and girls) who might love this stuff.

Although Jack Kerouac's On the Road has been praised as a milestone in American literature, this film version brings into question how much of a story it really offers.

Admission has some sublime moments, most of them involving Fey and Rudd dancing around their inevitable romance. The problem is in the foundation.

It’s funny as hell, sometimes too self-consciously “indie” — but it leaves us with a final shot as perfect as anything I’ve seen to close a movie in quite some time.

While Olympus Has Fallen breaks no major new ground in the political thriller genre, Fuqua has directed a sharp, very taut adventure that keeps you engrossed from start to finish.

It's a portrait of a time and place, characters keeping company around a simple kitchen table, and the helplessness adolescents feel when faced with the priorities of those in power. What I'll take away from it is the knowledge that now the Fannings have given us two actresses of such potential.

Familiar family dynamics are amusingly exaggerated in the Paleolithic setting, where the most basic necessities require everyone's full-time attention.

Its chief virtue is its lead performance, in which twin brothers are played by a promising new Argentinian actor named Viggo Mortensen.

This is one of the craziest films to come along in a while and I can confidently say that anyone who sees it will either hail it is some kind of crackpot masterpiece or dismiss it as one of the silliest damn things they've ever seen.

A sputtering, so-so B thriller with a neat hook but very little personality.

A candy-colored fever dream is the most unforgettable movie of the year so far.

What's exceptional about The Silence is its style.

This is also one dark and wickedly funny comedy.

Reincarnated seems more interested in showing us countless scenes of people smoking herb than in giving us details about the making of the album it purports to be documenting. Granted, Snoop is immersing himself in a culture where this is a customary process, but it gets old and tired very quickly.

Upon leaving the theater I had a feeling like I just got to know a bunch of kids: some great, some annoying, but all living lives that extend beyond what little I saw of them on the screen.

Pavilion is an odd thing: a movie that manages to be immersive without being about much of anything.

Beyond the Hills is an arthouse film from Romania, yet, in its slow, lurching progress toward a tragic exorcism, it is a stylistic nephew of America's "The Exorcist."

As is the case with most of the elements in Emperor, the cliches are relatively few and spaced apart, and the tearjerking and profound moments are authentic and well-earned.

Petzold is a master at creating the kind of tension that can be felt on a subterranean level, a sort of acute uneasiness that can't be easily diagnosed, fixed, or even acknowledged by the characters. This is well-trod ground for Petzold, but never has it been so fully realized, so palpable, as in Barbara.

The Condemned is nothing but a creaky façade.

This is the main problem I had with Don't Stop Believing: Everyman's Journey. On several occasions, the most interesting human details are either left out or barely commented on by the filmmakers, resulting in a documentary that skirts dangerously close to hagiography.

The film becomes a sort of boxing match, getting more intense with each round, building to an exciting finish.

An eccentric period melodrama with horror-flick overtones. Occasionally incoherent but never dull, the movie brims with weird imagery.

Some of the surprises in Oz the Great and Powerful, the much-anticipated "Wizard of Oz" origins movie, are delightful. Others, however, sink the movie just below the point of recommendation, with the primary drawback falling on the lovely shoulders of Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis, as early versions of Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, respectively.

Starting with Le Petit Soldat, Godard was forging his own individualistic art and becoming the most relevant director of our time.

Ed Harris in Phantom is like Steve Carlton with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1972 — delivering a wall-to-wall, amazing performance that's lost in a sea of dreadfulness.

This is one of those 93-minute movies that seem about 88 minutes too long. Or not worth making in the first place.

The chilling and stylish and aggressively creepy Stoker begins at the end and takes us on a shocking and lurid journey before we land right where we started, now seeing every small detail through a different lens. It's disturbingly good.

This is Webber's flawed but treasured document of his son, an attempt to share a portrait of their developing relationship, and — later on — a chance for Isaac to see his dad's parental reflections captured on-screen.

Somewhere in the laundry list of clichés, there is a movie here that we have already seen and forgotten.

A good documentary that is good for you. The bad news is that broccoli and bananas are neither available nor affordable for many Americans. That's the message of Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush's A Place at the Table, a necessary report on the national issue of hunger.

A rousing, original and thoroughly entertaining adventure.

Dark Skies is a bore that even the most forgiving genre buffs will find difficult to defend or endure.

A few great directors have the ability to draw us into their dream world, into their personalities and obsessions and fascinate us with them for a short time. This is the highest level of escapism the movies can provide for us.

The Gatekeepers has a cold air to it: washed-out colors, tan ominous soundtrack, eerily floating satellite footage… The most chilling aspect, however, is the blunt commentary about the work itself.

Who would have guessed Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would deliver the best work of his career playing a guy who squares off against a pack of small-time street thugs.

Carl Franklin's film is true to the tone and spirit of the book. It is patient and in no hurry. It allows a balanced eye for the people in its hero's family who tug him one way and another.

There's an unlikelihood so large in Future Weather that it nearly derails the film. That was what I admired the most about it.

The film's craziest, most easily mocked character emerges as the one most fully alive. Old Kiarostami, master of paradoxes, is set in his ways, but his ways are never set.

A film is a terrible thing to waste. For Roman Coppola to waste one on A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is a sad sight to behold. I'll go further. For Charlie Sheen to waste a role in it is also a great pity. I stop not: For Bill Murray to occupy his time in this dreck sandwich is a calamity.

Like the Bond movies, the "Die Hard" films thrive on brilliantly wicked villains. In this edition, we barely know which bad guy is the main bad guy. The script is filled with heavy-handed dialogue about parents and their children, framed by well choreographed but generic action sequences.

Lore belongs in the inspiration-and-control camp. It makes dizzying flourishes out of moments that would pass as filler in other films.

Beautiful Creatures springs to life whenever Irons, Thompson or Rossum is centerstage. The grown-ups get to wear all the coolest costumes and spout all the juiciest lines. Problem is, this isn't their story. It's first and foremost a semi-plodding teen romance with supernatural overtones.

If it can be said movies have personalities, I give you three words to sum up the basic core identity of Safe Haven: Bat. Bleep. Crazy.

Many comedies fall short, putting wit on hold to fulfill the necessities of plot. Here, however, plot simply provides a destination and a deadline. This film races with such high energy that the humor continues to satisfy, if only because the characters are so likeable.

Coscarelli knows how to exploit horror/sci-fi tropes and adeptly meld a practical effect with a well-timed gag. Many could depict a man's disembodied moustache with the right degree of farcicality, but few can imbue it with such an oddball credibility.

Imagine music for a sorcery-related plot and then dial it down to ominous forebodings. Without Thomas Newman's score, Side Effects would be a lesser film, even another film.

It wants to be "Midnight Run" meets "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," but it carries little of the dramatic heft and real-world semi-plausibility of those much superior efforts.

An occasionally entertaining, often incomprehensible and ultimately quite average 1980s-homage mismatched buddy action picture.

Sometimes it's all about the casting. The notice of a screening came around, I read the names Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, and it didn't matter in a way what the movie was about - although it didn't hurt that it was a crime movie.

It is a mystery, this business of life. I can't think of any under cinematic undertaking that allows us to realize that more deeply.

A well-paced, nicely directed, post-apocalyptic love story with a terrific sense of humor and the, um, guts to be unabashedly romantic and unapologetically optimistic.