You also see a man, flawed and imperfect, finding his way through with his music, constantly searching for his place in the world.

It's all about making everybody happy. If that's not grounds for a good relationship, then I don't know what is.

The most fortunate thing about The Lucky One is that despite a plot hole so big it could generate its own gravity field, it's still not a bad movie.

Detention has a frenetic visual style that's fun and appealing in a lot of ways, but there are way too many elements fighting for attention.

One of the scariest films I've seen in ages, although I cannot in all honesty explain exactly what the movie is about.

Monsieur Lazhar doesn't send you home depressed. Instead, the film leaves you hopeful, and even exhilarated, that even the most painful wounds can sometimes heal.

Pearce gets into his groove swiftly, owns it and remains entertaining throughout. The rest of the movie, however, would work better as a video game.

It showcases one of Whedon's greatest strengths: his ability to take previously disrespected genres - in this case the slasher film - and turn them inside-out and upside-down and every which way but loose.

The actors, many of them now in their mid-30s, look understandably fuller in the face and thicker around the waist. The jokes, too, are starting to show their age: They wobble.

Not a bad movie - everybody wants dreams to come true - but its platitudes sound awfully hollow sometimes.

Coriolanus is not by any stretch a hero, and yet Fiennes makes him magnetic, a warrior you can't look away from even when you might want to.

The Deep Blue Sea is a suffocating movie, and it's meant to be.

Musical Chairs is about overcoming impossible odds and never giving up and chasing your dreams – all that afterschool-special stuff - but it's also charming and upbeat, and it's stuffed with great, vibrant, insanely catchy music. No Bee Gees, though.

The Hunger Games takes no risks.

Delicacy bears a slight whiff of Anthony Minghella's fantastic "Truly Madly Deeply," but while Minghella's film is a romantic comedy classic, Delicacy hovers just this side of memorable.

As usual for the Dardennes, the plot is slight but loaded with hairpin turns of tremendous emotional power.

An intoxicating, world-class collaboration between a filmmaker (Spain's Fernando Trueba), two artists (designer Javier Mariscal and animator Tono Errando) and a musician (Cuban pianist/bandleader Bebo Valdés).

A surprisingly sappy misfire from brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, a hug-it-out, touchy-feely movie that succumbs to the maudlin sentimentality they had avoided in all their previous pictures (The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Cyrus).

The fact that the entire film is in Spanish, and Ferrell plays a Mexican named Armando, are two of the tamest elements in the movie.

This is the rare breed of Hollywood studio production that has the brash spirit of an independent picture and the sharp wit of a stand-up comic.

Eventually, though, Seeking Justice devolves into the usual business of chases and elaborate double-crosses that leave behind all vestiges of realism for the sake of popcorn thrills.

"The silence will kill you!" warn the posters for Silent House. That's only if the boredom doesn't get you first, though.

The movie also glows bright with life and hope, celebrating the innate human instinct to push onward and persevere, even in the face of incomprehensible evil.

This is the kind of colossally misguided vanity project.

Friends With Kids cheerfully earns its R rating on language alone, but always in service of a good laugh.

John Carter manages to be a ridiculous amount of fun, even if you are immune to the charms of Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) running around in what amounts to a stylish loincloth.

Tilda Swinton is the star of We Need to Talk About Kevin, and her performance is so complex and volcanic and transfixing that all of the film's flaws melt away.

Only in the execution does Madonna stumble: Despite the undeniable romance of the historical material, she has made a movie more concerned with how things look than how they feel. Which should not surprise anyone.