Even if there were a compelling narrative here to begin with, Montiel's excessive technique would throw you right out of it.

It's lovely to see these attempts at punk parenting, but there's really not much "punk" to them beyond appearances.

This is a lumpy, dumb, suspenseless thing that sometimes scarcely feels finished.

The Double does contain some delightfully over-the-top twists that make no sense but are great fun to consider.

Ifans takes dorky, grandiose dialogue and turns it into something almost - well, Shakespearean.

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.

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.

It's not the addition of airships and male dangly earrings that make Paul W.S. Anderson's take on Alexandre Dumas' classic, much-adapted adventure such a drag, it's everything else - the incoherence, the anvil-heavy dialogue, the lack of anything beyond the broadest of characterizations.

Le Havre proceeds from the usual Kaurismäkian premise: Things are only going to get worse, so why not just go with it?

Margin Call's strengths are of mood and the slick surfaces of things, and these elements are haunting long after the credits have rolled.

Johnny English Reborn never quite ignites, even though it starts out promisingly enough.

Where Paranormal Activity 3's weak points show are in the unbelievable silliness of its characters.

Olsen's performance is restrained but not tentative; you could say the same for the movie around it.

Moretz brings some natural gravity to a role that hasn't been adequately fleshed out.

Trespass is best received as an almost viable B-movie that just happens to have A-list leads.

Aside from his usual bold color schemes, Almodóvar has managed a remarkably restrained telling of what's in essence a sci-fi psychosexual melodrama set in the very near future of 2012 Toledo.

There are some body-horror gross-outs if you're into that sort of thing, but mostly what you get are a bunch of too-obvious leftovers from the "Alien" stockroom, including a selection of moist innards, slimy tendons, dripping fangs and the like.

Brewer, who spent most of his childhood in Memphis, is one of the few contemporary filmmakers I know of who can make movies about the South without sentimentalizing it, glorifying it or looking down on it.

Genial and mild, The Big Year doesn't give in to the temptation to juice up its story with outsized caricatures or inflated dramas.

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

The Ides of March doesn't cut as deeply or as sharply as Clooney might like, but at least he found the right actor to navigate its dark emotional twists and turns.

1911 isn't propaganda but more a relentless, serious, fiercely nationalistic bit of historical mythmaking.

It goes through all the motions, properly and efficiently, and yet it's missing some core warmth. Watching Real Steel, I kept thinking of Brad Bird's retro-modern cartoon "The Iron Giant," and of how that picture humanized a metal alien so effortlessly.

You want to tell Six that yes, we get it already. But then subtlety isn't exactly his thing.

Dirty Girl is harmless enough, and the early scenes, in which Danielle surveys poor Clarke with snobbish contempt, have a pleasing nastiness.

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.

The picture could be so much better than it is, and yet it's also the kind of movie that makes you want to grade on the curve, adding extra points for good intentions.

While it's not quite enough to fuel a whole feature, the premise of Tucker & Dale vs Evil is a slice of meta-genre brilliance.