Allegiance works better as a way of reminding us who does the fighting in this age of outsourcing than it does as a human drama.

Much has been made of the fact that Promised Land was partly funded by the enemies of our domestic gas industry - the foreign oil nabobs in the United Arab Emirates. But the film gets so cheesy that I suspect it was also secretly funded by Velveeta.

Parental Guidance kicks off with a mean-spirited joke about an overweight woman and heads downhill from there.

I don't think he (Apatow) did enough research on his topic. Because no one could be as whiny, spoiled, tasteless, combative and reliant on annoying stand-up comedy riffs as the entire cast of this film, the most disappointing one of the year.

Anything following that spectacular sequence is bound to be something of a letdown - especially when it ends up playing like standard-issue Hollywood melodrama.

The acting is OK, but none of the leads has the kind of sizzle that might have turned this into something as special as another film set roughly in the same era, "Diner.''

Petzold raises questions of honor and builds the romance with an absolutely rigorous lack of sentiment, moving Barbara to a sweeping finish as emotionally satisfying as any this year.

What's best about the film are its quick jumps from one depravity to the next as jazz rambles on the soundtrack: Youth is a candle to be burned at both ends, with (as it was once said about Bob Dylan) a blowtorch in the middle.

In a movie season - and a month - filled with so much gunfire, bloodshed and human despair, it's refreshing to sit back and bask in the sheer joy with which these brightly costumed, stunningly agile performers navigate fire, water and air.

Cruise's Jack Reacher is a loner who doesn't smile, charm, love the ladies, aim his index fingers to the heavens or sing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" in bars. Here he just snarls and kills people. Yes, please, and let's have more of the same.

This is a compelling and comprehensive guide to one of the most Kafkaesque crime stories in American history.

Django Unchained might have been a revelation in 2005. But after Quentin Tarantino and others have spent years spoofing '60s and '70s genre movies, this mock spaghetti Western tastes like it came out of the microwave.

It's worth seeing the movie for Hathaway alone.

All great films have imagination; this one also has the sense of experience.

It's a one-joke movie, if "Jewish mothers are annoying" is a joke. But just as a film about boredom should not actually be boring, no movie should credibly simulate the experience of being stuck in a car with Barbra Streisand for eight days.

Like the fictional Clarice Starling in "The Silence of the Lambs,'' Maya is a consummate professional who brilliantly performs her job in an often hostile work environment.

Things go awry in the last act, as the movie stops dead for more songs and a tragic coda that seems forced and trite, rather than the three-hankie finale we've all earned. Still, Cumming is wonderful.

The film thwarts any pat expectations you might glean from the town's bad economy and these checkered backgrounds. The teenagers are refreshingly gentle and clean-living; they don't drink, they don't swear and they certainly aren't having sex. All three are religious, a fact that is neither emphasized nor underplayed.

While Caplan works well in theory as an antiromantic-comedy heroine, director and co-screenwriter Michael Mohan just doesn't give her enough to do.

If the poor really interested such filmmakers, these movies would have something to offer other than lugubriousness masquerading as seriousness, and clichés presented as hard truths.

Oddly, though, for a film so dedicated to celebrating what he can still accomplish, his early performing career gets a lot more emphasis than the music still being composed. And that's a pity, because what little we hear is entrancing.

Not everyone will be in tune with the movie's sick sense of humor, although it's sometimes hilarious.

The film is one-sided and at times unfocused, but it makes a lot of sense politically.

This is grim, bleak material that at times is monotonous, but its woe feels authentic.

Painful, misshapen and a little gross. It's an enlarged prostate of a movie.

Piles on enough eye candy and action sequences to please fans, plus more humor than the three "Rings" films - even if it only occasionally achieves the trio's grandeur.

Director Jacob Rosenberg makes heavy use of family photos and talking heads, but the person we want most to hear from, Way himself, is largely missing. Go figure.

In addition to the magnificent music, the movie takes its rumpled charm from Fry's unfeigned fanboy manner.