Rid of Me is a ragged film that doesn't always work. Beyond just the midpoint shift, it does seem frequently uneven tonally.

In Time has so much style and energy that it comes across as an act of boldness rather than just a liberal-minded tract, though of course, it's that too. If there were ever a movie made for the 99 percent, this is it.

This picture belongs to Jason Bateman, who, after years of playing the second or third banana (and plenty of times being the best thing in a given film), finally gets to show off his considerable gifts as the co-lead in a mainstream comedy.

The plot is worked out with care, and it takes its time, unapologetically, in a manner that's perfectly suited to thinking adults. The whole enterprise reeks of class.

It reminds me more of Shane Black's "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," though ultimately it's darker and more raggedy around the margins. Still, Monahan, like Black and unlike Ritchie, has some feeling for his characters.

Relies almost entirely on its tunnel-vision, single-player style for its scares. It’s a strategy that stalls out halfway through, which means it works for twice as long as it should.

Comes across like the creation of a precocious student. I don't mean that to be a damning critique, though Detachment is a mesmerizing misfire -- it's just that it has the uncomplicated earnestness and hyperbolic melodrama of teenage poetry.

A concerted effort to make a scary movie without spilling a drop of blood, Insidious is earnest to the point of suffocation about scaring you silly.

Some of us wonder, still, how Margaret Thatcher can continue to live with herself. Watching Meryl Streep walk around so ably in Thatcher's skin isn't enlightening; it's more like a living nightmare.

As it is, The Devil's Double, a handsome and occasionally dazzling thriller with at least one dynamo performance from its star, is ultimately dominated by its style.

If you've ever wondered how a bunch of blockheaded white boys would handle a bullet wound, you're in for a treat.

Bella's an empowered badass in this last installment, wielding newborn strength while showing unusual self-control and learning to use her new abilities - and that's why things feel off.

For a movie with a comedic premise this simple – essentially: can you believe we made a movie with a premise this simple? – Casa de Mi Padre can feel pretty exhausting.

It would have a very good shot at being entertaining were it not so outwardly concerned with being important.

One of those big, extravagant-looking romances that you might automatically deem "conventional" - except for the fact that almost nobody makes big, extravagant-looking romances anymore.

Safe House is a twisted claw of a movie, a picture so visually ugly that, to borrow a line from Moms Mabley, it hurt my feelings.

Burns handles the more dramatic moments - divorce, accidental death, betrayal - with invention, using abrupt cuts and impressionistic editing to keep the film from settling into a rut.

A film loaded with interest that somehow fails to be interesting, La Soga is inspired by true events and not much else.

It's still an obligingly tense, scruffy addition to the one-last-crime genre.

Minor but still quite enjoyable. And like other minor Woody Allen pictures it becomes more interesting when placed in their larger context.

A massive wedgie of a comedy, which is to say it's a comedy of extreme discomfort.

Think Like a Man is rowdy and funny and showcases an immensely likable ensemble cast it uses to delineate its war between the sexes.

Hickenlooper too often approaches his subject with the filmmaking equivalent of a wry chuckle.

As you might have guessed from its title, Drinkers is as full of cheap sentimentality and predictable behavior as a Hell's Kitchen bar would have been in the 1970s.

Amid the macho poses and reloading of his unbelievably enormous weapon, I was distracted by the notion of Brody’s participation as a kind of privately satisfying performance art (a similar impulse found James Franco doing a guest stint on "General Hospital").

A film so tightly rigged that even its star's centrifugal charms can't keep you fully checked in.

The problem is that just as we’re getting to know these characters as people, the movie pulls a veil over them: It loses its nerve and mutates into an only mildly compelling crime drama, albeit one whose protagonist is maybe more tortured than usual.

It isn't a movie - it's more like the world's most expensive, elaborate viral video, making a detour to the big screen before being broken up into more easily consumable segments to be consumed on YouTube.