The semi-autobiographical, microbudgeted Breaking Upwards is indeed precious. But it's also smart, witty and less self-absorbed than you might reasonably expect.

Don McKay is a curious hybrid of warring tones that occasionally make peace. When they do, it's quite magical.

It's a surprisingly nuanced and sober tale of brotherhood and betrayal.

Breillat plumbs the power of fairy tales to enchant, disturb, warn and teach.

Admirably turns a potentially one-note joke into a consistently funny package.

But c'mon! Erotic obsession, catfights, naked chicks making out -- at heart Chloe is a midnight movie, and all the Vivaldi in the world can't change that.

What gives their story emotional heft has to do with a different kind of dimension: a depth of feeling surrounding the Black Stallion-style bonding of boy and beast.

The overused homages and a tacked-on twist ending are just failed attempts to save Repo Men from its own shallow blood lust.

On the page, it's a funny little snapshot of the preteen mind, ruled by prevailing forces of fear and aggression, yet still given to silliness and lowbrow yuks. In a movie, however, Greg's thoughts are made painfully literal, so instead of being a reflection of his hyperactive imagination, they're grotesque cartoons standing in for real life.

Lisbeth, pierced, tattooed and played by Rapace with a sometimes uncontrolled ferocity, qualifies as both a victim of male violence and a violent avenger of it. This makes her a lot more compelling than her comparatively passive partner -- something that Hollywood will doubtless find it necessary to "remedy" when Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is remade in English.

Greenberg is on every level the work of a more mature filmmaker, and quite possibly a happier man.

Vincere, which comes as close to grand opera as can be achieved without anyone actually bursting into song, feels like a big movie -- handsomely mounted, full of dark shadows counterpointed with stray shafts of light, with dramatic close-ups of faces driven by passion and madness and heavy silences brutally interrupted by clashing tympani.

There's something kind of captivating about a film that's been painstakingly drawn to glorify the craft of illustration, and that's comfortable using retro techniques. Because after all, what else makes sense for bringing to life the gold and scarlet ornamentation in ancient manuscripts?

Tedious to watch and torture to listen to.

The incoherence is made all the more disappointing because Eisner displays a great deal of raw talent for the genre's tone and set pieces.

The movie is a curiosity, of course. Both Marc and Kim have decidedly unusual life stories.

Redmayne is hugely persuasive as a redneck geek -- you'd never guess he's a Brit with credits in classical theater.

Unfortunately, brutality is about all this update of 1941's The Wolf Man can do well. Mutilations, decapitations and disembowelments are handled with aplomb in the first R-rated film from director Joe Johnston (Jumanji, Jurassic Park III). But everything that doesn't involve gore feels like an afterthought.

The film becomes particularly risible when family matters come into play. Since the young demigods, by nature, are raised in single-parent homes, their encounters with the gods are characterized less by wonder than by the therapy-speak of wounded kids with daddy issues.

If Marshall is an unrepentant Tory on some issues -- Valentine's Day stumps for teen abstinence and marrying your best friend, and warns that career women may end up alone -- he is open-hearted and generously conciliatory on gay rights, and he implies quite casually that multi-culti coupling may be the surest way to dispose of racism.

In fact, given its subject matter, Creation should arguably be bolder and more shocking if it wants to survive among the fittest at the multiplex. Audiences with so many flashier pictures available may not regard a straightforward period biopic as a natural selection.

While the story pivots on an actual girl-who-cried-wolf incident, this elegantly constructed movie is about much more than that.

Miles ahead in terms of production values and a conscious avoidance of overt proselytizing. It will likely be an enormous success with the evangelical communities at which it's targeted. That doesn't save it from being an utter failure outside that narrow context.

The only apparent reason Tooth Fairy exists at all is to squeeze tough-guy ex-wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson into tights and a tutu. As comic ideas go, that doesn't stretch much further than the poster.

Mostly, though, 44 Inch Chest is complacently in love with the rhythmically profane talk that came so easily to writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto in "Sexy Beast."

Andrea Arnold has crafted a scene that approaches a literal embodiment of the term "kitchen-sink drama" here is most likely coincidence; nevertheless, her film is a bold new entry in that long-standing British tradition of disquieting social realism.

In short, Ritchie's come up with precisely what you'd expect of him — a pumped-up, anachronistically modern Sherlock Holmes designed for the ADD crowd. Expect a sequel. Or six.

Police, Adjective has considerable power, and the issues it raises linger in the mind.