If you can get past the ludicrous fantasy — well, wait, that’s the problem. You can’t get past the ludicrous fantasy.

The movie is filled with graphic sex scenes that leave nothing to the imagination — this film would make even John Waters blush — but there’s more at work here than shock value and sensationalism.

In The Monuments Men, director George Clooney takes a wild, stranger-than-fiction true story and turns it into a dull, prestigious slog.

A manic and at times surprising comedy that has more imagination and creativity than all the Transformers pictures combined.

The movie lets you make up your own mind about this vivacious, likable woman, who is doing her best not to surrender to her inner loneliness.

You expect something far different and better than the same-old.

Unlike "A Separation", in which Iranian culture and mores played critical roles, the theme in The Past is more universal and spelled out in the title.

As a film, though, Gimme Shelter is unremarkable, a predictable story of redemption that happens awfully fast, to a girl who only seems to be in peril briefly — and has a rich dad to bail her out.

Screenwriter/director Tornatore is best known for his nostalgic "Cinema Paradiso," which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1990. But The Best Offer is completely different in style and tone; it’s dark instead of light, a psychological thriller of sorts, only with Virgil’s heart and orderly life in peril instead of his life.

The Invisible Woman offers a compelling glimpse at a life once hidden.

Ride Along sabotages itself, although I suppose that doesn’t really matter — there are already plans in the works for Ride Along 2.

Pine, who has been so good and so instrumental in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek series as Captain Kirk, turns out to be a decent Ryan.

The arsenal is empty, and there’s nowhere for The Truth About Emanuel to go except — unfortunately — downhill.

August: Osage County is easier to watch on screen, and maybe for that we should be grateful.

Her argues that sometimes, crazy can be wonderful.

Shirley MacLaine pops up as Walter’s ever-forgiving mother, and Wigg kills in an elevating sequence in which she sings David Bowie’s Space Oddity at a karaoke bar. Penn only gets one scene, but it’s a great one, and it reminds you how funny of an actor he can be.

A better primer-for-the-uninitiated than an in-depth, fresh and insightful examination of a famous and remarkable life.

If it had been a drama, The Wolf of Wall Street might have been unwatchable: There’s simply too much of everything. But Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) hit on the genius idea to turn the story into a riotous comedy, one that keeps topping itself everytime you think it can’t possibly get crazier.

The lack of effort, right down to the unimaginative title, is dispiriting.

Saving Mr. Banks is two movies crammed into one cumbersome, overlong drama.

Like his con artists are prone to saying, American Hustle works from the feet up, and the fun is intoxicating.

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ smallest movies — this one doesn't have the broad appeal of "True Grit" or "No Country For Old Men" — but like Llewyn’s music, it comes from the heart and it is deeply felt. It is also one of their best.

Go for Sisters is minor Sayles, and the movie occasionally meanders. But the characters stay with you, particularly Bernice and Fontayne, whose relationship is beautifully transformed over the course of the film.

Jackson has become too distracted by his digital toys to give his characters the same weight and importance he used in the Rings trilogy.

The Broken Circle Breakdown manages to pull off a small miracle, using joyous music and tenderness to tell a tragic story that moves you but doesn’t depress you.

Page, who died in 2008 in Los Angeles at the age of 85, makes for a blunt but engaging narrator who’s refreshingly candid about sex and her own inner demons.

Scott Cooper, who directed and co-wrote Out of the Furnace, empathizes with people who feel their lives have hit a dead end (his previous film, "Crazy Heart," earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar as a washed-up country singer who had given up on himself). These are difficult characters to dramatize.

The movie has a longing melancholy that leavens the humor — it’s a surprisingly sad, gentle comedy.