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's all sweet and very, very silly. I was surprised by the subtleties - both comedic and thematic.

Rather than rushing to determine the cause of death – of love, or of a country -- it stubbornly keeps listening for a heartbeat, even though there may not be one.

It's painful to watch a movie like Dream House - well-acted, beautifully shot and directed with extraordinary care and attention to craft - only to realize that the story, the alleged backbone, is absurd.

It's an eloquent summation of the complexities and strength of their bond, and a poetic cap to the pair's fictional and real ups and downs over two films.

The very woozy nature of the story itself works.

Physically Watts is of course a decent match for the even more aggressively glamorous Plame; in spirit, it would seem, they are even closer. In the field Plame was first and foremost an actress, a pretender whose belief in her pretending was often of mortal consequence.

Puss in Boots doesn't have and doesn't strive for the soul of a Pixar film, but gets pleasure enough out of its own characters and the way they move through this cleverly realized world.

Scenic, inventively playful, and successfully serious when it wants to be.

Is it entertainment? Is it satire? Is it art? It's probably a little of all three, and yet ultimately not quite enough of any.

To Rome with Love - rangy, vaguely ridiculous and trepidatiously optimistic - is Allen's film for tomorrow.

The love Segel has for the Muppets is a genuine, perceivable and positive quality that suffuses this good-hearted revitalization of the franchise, and if some wish fulfillment sneaks in there too.

Country Strong rides pretty high in the saddle, confident in the remarkably realized world Feste has created for her characters.

Waiting For Superman may rub a little raw here and there, but if it stirs that memory in enough voting and tax-paying Americans, it has at least begun to do its job.

The roots of romantic feeling, as explored in Wild Grass, Alain Resnais's jazzy ode to cinema and the love impulse in later life, are equally, spectacularly random.

Because Animal Kingdom is so richly suffused with atmosphere and style, you could almost float right past the deficiencies in its story in an admiring trance.

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.

The economics of star casting aside, what would Take Shelter have been like with James McAvoy or Mark Wahlberg or Jake Gyllenhaal at its center?

The result is a shaggy rise-and-fall story that is deceptively well-wrought, playing at times like an extremely hip, deep-access concert film.

Even the gags we've all seen before are handled so deftly you almost forget how ancient they are.

Manages to surprise with a charm and wit all its own.

The picture's finale isn't as smart as it ought to be. Cornish tries to make a damning social statement, but the only thing you take away from the movie is how cool it is to kick alien ass.

Naranjo keeps the action tense but understated; instead of allowing explosions and shootouts to pile up, he rations them in taut doses.

The audience is never seen and only faintly heard. This puts a lot of visual pressure on a very inward performer. Young is a beast onstage, to be sure - he seems to re-grow an appendix for each song.

It's either genius or madness to put Diesel and Johnson in the same movie, or the same scene. They're both enormously appealing performers.

The result is like a sugar rush after a visit to the vintage candy store.

There's even a shootout sequence that plays out, from start to finish, while our hero is in flagrante. That's something I don't believe I've ever seen in a movie.

Sometimes, maybe, it's a little too unoffensive: It's Kind of a Funny Story is so gentle, so anxious not to put a foot wrong, that it doesn't have much sticking power. But its casually compassionate perspective is also what makes it work.