Justin Timberlake continues to demonstrate that he is a real actor, with screen presence. But after the precise timing and intelligence he brought to "The Social Network," it's a little disappointing to find him in a role that requires less. He has a future in the movies.

She's So Lovely does not depict choices most audiences will condone, or even understand, but the film is not boring, and has the dread hypnotic appeal of a slowly developing traffic accident (in which we think there will probably be no fatalities).

Concussion is a good movie that could have been great without trying so hard to be great.

At a time when so many American movies keep dialogue at a minimum so they can play better overseas, what a delight to listen to smart people whose conversation is like a kind of comic music.

An effective entertainment, and Jennifer Lawrence is strong and convincing in the central role. But the film leapfrogs obvious questions in its path, and avoids the opportunities sci-fi provides for social criticism.

Christine is, of course, utterly ridiculous. But I enjoyed it anyway. The movies have a love affair with cars, and at some dumb elemental level we enjoy seeing chases and crashes. In fact, under the right circumstances there is nothing quite so exhilarating as seeing a car crushed, and one of the best scenes in Christine is the one where the car forces itself into an alley that's too narrow for it.

The Longest Yard more or less achieves what most of the people attending it will expect. Most of its audiences will be satisfied enough when they leave the theater, although few will feel compelled to rent it on video to share with their friends. So, yes, it's a fair example of what it is.

It goes without saying it's preposterous. But it has the texture and takes the care to be a full-blown film.

The filmmaking is sure-handed, the performances authentic.

Salvador is a movie about real events as seen through the eyes of characters who have set themselves adrift from reality. That's what makes it so interesting.

The movie never quite attains altitude. It has a great takeoff, levels nicely, and then seems to land on autopilot. Maybe it's the problem of resolving so much plot in a finite length of time, but it seems a little too facile toward the end.

Impressive, although not quite the film it could have been. It asks few hard questions.

A contagious enthusiasm runs through the heart of Jon Angio’s Revenge of the Mekons, a documentary that celebrates and explores the evolving ethos of the seminal British punk band The Mekons while also proving that some of rock’s most interesting stories come not from success but survival.

A well-assembled chase movie--a thriller, with a few existential notes left over from Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers the novel the movie's based on.

Glass Onion doesn’t have quite the zest and freshness of the original, and there are times when it’s a little too self-pleased with the social commentary and the meta references, but thanks to Johnson’s crackling good dialogue, the impressive production design and the sparkling performances from Craig and a whole new cast of possible suspects and/or murder victims, this is a whip-smart, consistently funny and sure to be crowd-pleasing affair.

I’m not sure there’s ever been a film with more callbacks, more surprise cameos, more inside-showbiz references — even a couple of jokes about the personal lives of certain participants. It’s all great fun, and it’s just enough to overcome the uninspired direction, mid-level special effects and hit-and-miss humor.

It is goofier than hell - you can't stop watching because nobody in the audience, and possibly nobody on the screen, has any idea what's going to happen next.

Most of the time, though, Anchorman works, and a lot of the time it's very funny.

American Reunion has a sense of deja vu, but it still delivers a lot of nice laughs.

At the end, I was expecting more of an emotional payoff; making a movie calm is one thing, and making it matter-of-fact is another. But make a note about Will Ferrell. There is depth there.

What is the use of a film like this? It inspires reflection... Mike Leigh's films realize that for most people, most days, life consists of the routine of earning a living, broken by fleeting thoughts of where our efforts will someday take us--financially, romantically, spiritually or even geographically. We never arrive in most of those places, but the mental images are what keep us trying.

What sets Prefontaine aside from most sports movies is that it's not about winning the big race. It's about the life of a runner.

The War Wagon is that comparative rarity, a Western filmed with quiet good humor.

The running time for the doc is a robust 2 hours and 27 minutes, but hey, the 73-year-old Van Zandt has lived too much life for it to be encapsulated in a zippy hour or so.

Saylor has created a character who will haunt you for some time after you leave the theater.

The movie crosses two formulas -- Fish Out of Water and Coming of Age -- fairly effectively. Because it isn't wall-to-wall action but actually bothers to develop its characters and take an interest in them, it was not at first considered commercial by its distributor, New Line, and languished on the shelf for two years.

American teenage movies tidy things up by pairing off the right couples at the end. In Europe they know that summers end and life goes on.

Likely to entertain kids, who seem to like jokes about anatomical plumbing. For adults, there is the exuberance of the animation and the energy of the whole movie, which is just plain clever.

One question is not addressed by the movie: Why were the children deported in the first place? Yes, we know the "reasons," but what were the motives?

An energetic, sprawling, sometimes aimless but ultimately entertaining old-fashioned blend of comedy and horror that’s overflowing with Easter Eggs and insider winks to the theme ride attraction, and benefits greatly from an ensemble cast that works overtime to make sure we enjoy ourselves.

This is a lovely movie.... So lovely a film, in fact, as to be nearly tame.

It’s a tart little gem, bolstered by a bounty of clever and winning performances.

Lemmons and her cast, aided by some great music, have created an interlude sure to lift the spirit during the holiday season.

Movies like Mama are thrill rides. We go to be scared and then laugh, scared and then laugh, scared and then shocked. Of course, there's almost always a little plot left over for a sequel. It's a ride I'd take again.

With an almost circus-like score setting the tone, a supernatural touch and a terrific ensemble cast playing characters that range from the eccentric to the deeply eccentric, Monuments is at times grounded, at times almost hallucinogenic — and always smart and entertaining.

What they've done here is to recapture not only the look and the storylines of old horror comics, but also the peculiar feeling of poetic justice that permeated their pages. In an EC horror story, unspeakable things happened to people - but, for the most part, they deserved them.

The movie is all about behavior, dialogue, star power and wiseass in-jokes. I really sort of liked it.

The movie is so sincere and confused in its values that it mirrors the goofy loyalties and violent pathology of its characters.

Marooned isn't very interesting from a stylistic point of view, and the actors tend to get buried beneath the technology, but it does tell an exciting story, And that, I imagine, was all Sturges (whose storytelling includes The Great Escape and Bad Day at Black Rock) was really trying to do.

The purpose of the movie is perhaps to show us, in a quietly amusing way, that while we travel down our own lifelines, seeing everything from our own points of view, we hardly suspect the secrets of the lives we intersect with.

“Supersonic” is all about the big, yet it thrives on small moments.

This is a sweet, whimsical, low-key movie, a movie that makes you feel good without pressing you too hard.

It's pretty trashy and sometimes stupid. But there was never a moment when I wasn't entertained on one level or another.

This is a lovely tribute that will appeal to longtime fans and those who are just discovering the amazing Peanuts universe.

This is a portrait of tunnel vision. Jiro exists to make sushi. Sushi exists to be made by Jiro.

This is a good small movie, sweet and sentimental, about a kid who never really got a chance to show his stuff. The best things in it are the most unexpected things: the portraits of everyday life, of a loving mother, of a brother who loves and resents him, of a kid growing up and tasting fame and leaving everyone standing around at his funeral shocked that his life ended just as it seemed to be beginning.

This plot, recycled from Austen, is the clothesline for a series of dance numbers that, like Hong Kong action sequences, are set in unlikely locations and use props found there; how else to explain the sequence set in, yes, a Mexican restaurant?

Via the steady direction by Theodore Bogosian and the golden-throat narration from the one and only Bill Kurtis, we learn the full and amazing story of the joint one newspaper wag dubbed a “supernova in the local and national nightlife firmament.”

The Sterile Cuckoo is not as good as it should have been because it lacks consistency of tone. But parts of it are awfully good, and Miss Minnelli is one hell of an actress.

It’s nothing new for sure, but writer/director David Twohy...throws in enough entertaining touches to maintain interest — despite an overlong two-hour running time.

The film is punctuated by violence, a great deal of violence, although most of it is exaggerated comic-book style instead of being truly gruesome. Walking that fine line is a speciality of Hill, who once simulated the sound of a fist on a chin by making tape recordings of Ping-Pong paddles slapping leather sofas.

In the borderline trifling but consistently amusing and wry period piece My Salinger Year, Qualley has the opportunity to carry the story, and she delivers an effortlessly endearing performance in a literary adventure that plays like The Devil Wears Prada meets Can You Ever Forgive Me, only at lower stakes.

With Rosewater, Stewart proves he can pull back from the satirical comedy and become a thoughtful, incisive and questioning filmmaker.

So monumentally silly, yet so wondrous to look at, that only a churl could find fault.

The final act of the film is extraordinary. How unusual it is to see kids this age in the movies seriously debating moral rights and wrongs and considering the consequences of their actions.

The new globetrotting, caper-packed romp with Kermit, Miss Piggy and the rest of the lovable team certainly is just as good as, and often an improvement on, the 2011 offering.

Warm-hearted and effective.

Macdonald is an absolute force as the twentysomething Patricia Dombrowski, who wakes up every morning determined and upbeat, even though her life path already looks to be a series of dead ends.

When politics do not create walls (as apartheid did), most people are primarily interested in their families, their romances, and their jobs. They hope to improve all three. The movie is about their hope.

This is the kind of adventure picture the studios churned out in the Golden Age -- so traditional it almost feels new.

Streep kills each of her numbers (no surprise there), while Jo Ellen Pellman more than holds her own with the big-name stars and gives the story its heart and smile with her empathetic portrayal of Emma.

I cannot imagine a Hollywood movie like this. Audiences would be baffled.

The performance and the character are fully realized, even in this movie that finds room for so many loose ends and dead ends.

A diabolical and absorbing experience.

Here is a movie so absorbing, so atmospheric, so suspenseful and so dumb, that it proves my point: The subject matter doesn't matter in a movie nearly as much as mood, tone and style.

Its interest comes from Shannon's fierce and sadistic training scenes as Kim Fowley, and from the intrinsic qualities of the performances by Stewart and Fanning, who bring more to their characters than the script provides.

This is a fun movie, and a bright and intelligent one. It bears few signs of having been made on a low budget, and the special effects are reasonably slick.

The downward arc of the first two acts of the movie is made harrowing and yet perversely amusing by the performance of Paul Kaye.

This is a movie about ideas, a drama based on the ancient war between science and superstition. At its center is a woman who in the fourth century A.D. was a scientist, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and teacher, respected in Egypt, although women were not expected to be any of those things.

Big Game never once feels credible, and that’s why it’s so entertaining. Almost nothing that takes place in this movie could occur in the real world, and there’s something comforting about that.

The movie is a delight, in ways both expected and rare.

Dan Brown's novel is utterly preposterous; Ron Howard's movie is preposterously entertaining.

Rod is played by Andy Samberg from "Saturday Night Live," who on the basis of this film, I think, could become a very big star.

No blood is shed. No bodies turn up. And yet The Assistant is one seriously chilling monster movie.

It has a charm based on its innocence, its conviction, its pre-Beatles soundtrack and the big 1950s cars the kids drive around in.

This is a good but not great Star Trek movie, a sort of compromise between the first two.

All of it is such a throwback on so many levels (Charlie’s car, his clothes, his incessant use of pay phones) that you just go with it, no matter how many confusing twists and turns the conspiracy theory plot takes thanks to co-writers Stuhr and Ricker.

The movie would have benefitted from a tight rewrite (it is too ambitious in including plot threads it doesn't have time to deal with), but Gibson's strong central performance speeds it along.

Shunning the tons of equipment ordinarily taken along on location, Brown used only what he could carry. The beautiful photography he brought home almost makes you wonder if Hollywood hasn't been trying too hard.

In a season of movies dumb and dumber, One Day has style, freshness, and witty bantering dialogue.

As a stand-alone work of cinema fiction, A Million Little Pieces is an effective blunt instrument of a film — a rough-edged, unvarnished, painfully accurate portrayal of addiction and rehabilitation.

This curious idea for a movie actually works.

It's one of the movies with a lot of smiles and laughter in it, and a good feeling all the way through. Just everyday life, warmly observed.

Outsourced is not a great movie, and maybe couldn't be this charming if it was. It is a film bursting with affection for its characters and for India.

This is no “Zero Dark Thirty” or “The Hurt Locker.” Lacking in nuance and occasionally plagued by corny dialogue, “13 Hours” is nonetheless a well-photographed, visceral action film, and a sincere and fitting tribute to those secret soldiers.

Body-switch plots are a license for adults to act like kids; probably nobody has had more fun at it than Tom Hanks did in "Big," but Curtis comes close.

While Friedkin will always be heralded primarily for the towering twin achievements of “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” this is a more than respectable farewell.

Michael Caplan’s Algren is a beguiling appreciation of the novelist, reporter and essayist.

It’s not a game anymore. In 1957, these kids were playing. And it was a perfect game.

This movie, like Boyz N the Hood, is uncompromising in its view of how things work in a neighborhood like South Central. It was made before the Los Angeles riots in April, 1992, but it provides a stark picture of the anger that was waiting to boil over.

Has the courage to work without a net, aware that when you're a teenager, your life is not a story so much as a million possible stories.

A screwball film noir with a lot of medium laughs and a few great big ones,

What makes the movie work is that Pitt and Jolie have fun together on the screen, and they're able to find a rhythm that allows them to be understated and amused even during the most alarming developments.

The acting is effective, the direction by Alexandre Franchi is confident, and the cinematography by Claudine Sauve could hardly look more assured.

It’s the powerful, raw, energized performance by Chadwick Boseman that makes this film worth seeing.

Simple enough to delight a child and complex enough to baffle a philosopher.

Entertaining for what it does, and admirable for what it doesn't do. It gets us involved in band politics and strategy, gives us a lot of entertaining halftime music, and provides a portrait of a gifted young man who slowly learns to discipline himself and think of others. That's what it does. What it doesn't do is recycle all the tired old cliches.

This is a cheeky, madcap romp, with exaggerated views of 1960s American stereotypes about Brits and vice versa, featuring terrific performances by Perlman and Grint, a most unlikely and most likable buddy duo.