Boasting a rich look and an engrossing storyline, it's the rare "to-be-continued" film that doesn't leave its audience feeling cheated.

If there's a breath of fresh air in it all, it's in the form of the young actress Jessica Barden playing a smoking, swearing, Tom Sawyer-flavored teenage delinquent determined to add some life to her excruciatingly boring rural existence.

The result is a movie that is about as riveting as -- well, as your average Robert Novak column.

127 Hours -- just like "Slumdog Millionaire" -- is a masterful slice of four-star cinema, featuring an irresistible performance by James Franco, breathtaking cinematography, and the kind of deep, searching soul that is absent from so much of what comes out of Hollywood.

The hard, cold truth is that the hard, cold For Colored Girls is just plain difficult to fall in love with, regardless of the amount of passion Perry poured into it or how much meaning he's freighted it with.

As a result, Hereafter isn't so deep that it will change the way many people think about the afterlife. But it is heartfelt and thoughtful and, in a way, comforting.

RED is so much fun -- and its Over the Hill Gang so likeable -- that this is one of those rare cases where I wouldn't mind seeing them come out of retirement again for another romp.

A reasonably well-made biopic, with crowd-pleasing moments, but one that -- despite that title -- isn't really about the animal.

It's also the kind of movie that, for all of its smarts and huggability, stumbles every so often. Usually that happens when it's trying just a bit too hard to be cute, such as in its occasional surrealist, animation-assisted segments.

The result is a ripped-from-the-Zeitgeist film that is razor-sharp, an astute and funny portrait of the early 2000s, with all its LOL's, its IMO's and its WTF's. Mostly its WTF's.

Without subtitles this time, it also stands a very real chance of migrating out of America's art houses and into its multiplexes, where it can sink its teeth into a whole new audience.

Little more than a glorified situation comedy. The problem is, it's all situation and no comedy.

An exceedingly well-assembled genre picture, a spell-binding, edge-of-your-seat thriller.

A movie that charms its way to being a kind of well-crafted teen touchstone that very well could become to today's generation what "Ferris Bueller" was to teens of the '80s.

Never Let Me Go isn't the kind of movie you talk about on the drive home -- it's even better. It's the kind that makes you sit quietly and think, rolling it around in your head and considering the angles.

Rather than "Greased Lightning," we get a holding pattern -- which is better than a crash-landing, but still ...

By the time The American is finished, it feels like one great big pointless exercise. With George Clooney on the poster.

Directed by someone you've never heard of and starring actors you won't be able to place, there's only one reason for a movie such as the locally shot Last Exorcism to exist: to scare the bejeezus out of you.

The Lottery Ticket doesn't hit the comedy jackpot, but it doesn't roll snake eyes, either. In my book, that's a winner.

She could stand to learn a lesson herself, from another magical governess -- you know, the one about the spoon full of sugar.

I love a good, brainless action flick as much as the next alpha male, but this time I had a whole lot of trouble laughing along.

I've got a fourth verb to add to the comma-challenged title of Julia Roberts' how-to-be-happy travelogue, Eat Pray Love. How about "edit"?

A refreshingly original take on the comic book adaptation.

As with most Ferrell projects, there's nothing profound going on in The Other Guys. It's just a bit of good, stupid fun, had at the expense of an uber-formulaic genre that has long been ripe for the spoofing. But it also works.

Rarely is an actress asked to do so much with so little -- and even rarer does that actress succeed as well as Clarkson does.

It's probably best not to think very hard about any of it -- just dummy up and laugh along.

A movie with a message, but the subtle kind; it's whispered wisdom, wrapped up in a story of mystery, of love, of regret, of repentance and redemption.

The result is a film with sporadic outbursts of wackiness, but one that (Oh, Fortuna's Wheel!) never gains traction from a storytelling standpoint.