Jarecki's thesis is that law enforcement targets minority communities, but his analysis is far too simplistic. Since when did pushers become victims?

Her film is closer to Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" in the way it gets inside the gumption and desperation of childhood lived on the edge. It's a terrific, bracingly sad movie.

As the "Empress of Fashion" who was the fashion editor of "Harper's Bazaar" before editing "Vogue" in its 1960s heyday, Vreeland comes across in the movie as something of a cross between Auntie Mame and Godzilla. She was a true original in a world where knock-offs abounded.

Hollywood has never been the best arena to hash out policy debates. But social-issue movies can have real societal impact. That's why Won't Back Down, which presses a lot of hot buttons, deserves to be taken seriously, and criticized seriously, on its own terms.

My favorite line in the movie comes when Gordon-Levitt, in a face-off with his mob boss (Jeff Daniels), informs him that he'd like to leave the business one day and move to France, to which Daniels replies: "I'm from the future; you should go to China."

As Sam, the wayward stepsister of Charlie's sardonic friend Patrick (Ezra Miller), Watson doesn't lose her cool, or her warmth, in a role that might easily have devolved into terminal sappiness.

I wish that the Mexican drug cartel subplot was not so overwrought and Oliver Stone-ish, and the decision to shoot much of the film "Cops"-style is also problematic. But the film puts you right inside an everyday inferno and, to its credit, doesn't turn down the heat.

What you get in Trouble with the Curve is standard-issue late-career Eastwoodiana. The growl, the snarl, the crotchetiness are already familiar to us from "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) and "Gran Torino" (2009), his last appearance as an actor.

Needless to say, everybody comes equipped with their very own overweight baggage; old grudges are revived, new ones are invented; and big personal revelations – most of which you can see coming a mile away – arrive on cue.

The performances by Phoenix and Hoffman are studies in contrast. Phoenix carries himself with a jagged, lurching, simianlike grace while Hoffman gives Dodd a calm deliberateness. Both actors have rarely been better in the movies. The real Master class here is about acting – and that includes just about everybody else in the film, especially Adams, whose twinkly girl-next-door quality is used here to fine subversive effect.

Fred Schepisi, one of the world's great directors ("The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith," "A Cry in the Dark") is working at half-speed in The Eye of the Storm, a convoluted family drama derived from a Patrick White novel.

As for me, I don't see why women being as slobby and gross as the guys is such a feminist breakthrough – especially since, as in Bachelorette, the slobbiness and grossness is witless.

Abbott has a compelling unpredictability, though, and in a couple of his scenes with Lynskey, you can spot the stirrings of a more complex film than the one we finally ended up with.

This may sound like a dry subject, but, as presented here, it's anything but – especially if you have more than a passing interest in the art and science of what gets projected onto our movie screens these days.

What does it all mean? I'm not convinced that Fricke's movies are much more than exalted travelogues, but you certainly feel as if you've been somewhere after you've seen one of them.

Clarke started out as a dancer studying with Martha Graham, and much of Ornette has a dancelike swing and propulsion. What it doesn't provide is a cogent look at Coleman's artistry. This is not a jazz film for people who want to sit back and get mellow. The film itself is a species of jazz. It's offbeat without missing the beat.

Langella's performance turns what might have been a "Twilight Zone"-style trifle into something more: a movie about a proud, ornery man combating his fearfulness.

Good at scenes of high-level nastiness, but there's too much confusing exposition in this "Legacy" and the action scenes, some of them good, are too little and too late.

Potty jokes and bawdy gross-outs predominate, and the few good laughs are swamped by the overall laughlessness.

Karsin doesn't adequately detail the political complexities of the struggle, but how can one not respond to someone like tribal leader Flor Ilva, who declares, "We women are warriors, not with weapons, but with our thoughts and through raising our children."

If the film doesn't really explore the pain and bitterness of this marriage, it's still leagues ahead of most such attempts.

The Imposter has too many reenactments for my taste, and Bourdin is glorified by Layton more often than he is condemned. Still, this is one creepy mystery.

It's as if we were watching one of those buddy-buddy bromances told, this time, from the perspective of the woman who is normally on the sidelines of the men's attentions and affections. It's a welcome angle.

Morgan is a wonderful writer when he's working from the headlines, but his "personal" movies, like "Hereafter" and this one, release a bleary, pseudo-profound aspect of his talent that's best left in the dark.

Director Len Wiseman is good on action, and Patrick Tatopoulus's dystopic production design is within hailing distance of "Blade Runner," his chief influence. But essentially this is a big-screen video game.

The title captures the man. He makes no apologies.

This is a real-life fairy tale with a remarkably happy ending.

It's a mash-up of blah buddy comedy and gross-out CGI monster splatter, with nary a laugh to be had.