Sweet, sentimental, silly and star-studded, Nanny McPhee Returns is one of the best children's movies of the year.

It's not as scary as it needs to be or as clever as it thinks it is, but the new 3D version of "Piranha" is at least as gimmicky as those fabled 3D films of yore. With all the pointless 3D cartoons and joyless 3D ""Clash of the Titans" conversions, at last here's a picture that tosses its cookies, its coffee cups and its D-cups right in your lap.

If Kristen Stewart ever saw Vampires Suck, she'd be scarred for life.

The Expendables feels, well -- disposable, a movie whose nostalgia isn't enough to make this 50. caliber trip down Memory Lane worth the fake napalm.

Eat Pray Love isn't a bad movie -- just a spiritually dead one, wearing and wearying.

Of all the gonzo-goofy comic book adaptations that embrace video gaming sensibilities, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is the gonzo-goofiest.

It's rooting against grandma that drives this violent, hardhearted film, and waiting for the pride of lions she's created to devour her that gives Animal Kingdom its animal energy.

It's amusingly off-the-wall, but entirely too cluttered to come together.

It's the same movie as the earlier "gotta dance" over-choreographed crunk-and-breakdance epics. Exactly the same.

A flipped take on tween-to-teen romance that make it such a minor gem.

There's a soap opera going on inside that tin can with a cannon.

The situations are painstakingly set up and downright painful to sit through. So enjoy, or endure the appetizers, because with this Dinner, dessert is truly the topper.

Tedious time-killer of a kiddie comedy.

The movie's central gimmick isn't enough, and when more supernatural twists that don't play by the movie's own fantasy rules kick in, it lost me.

Duvall, an American Lear not going gently into that good night, reminds us that it will be a sad day indeed for movie fans when it's about time for him to Get Low.

It's so sentimental and sweet that you can almost forgive the kids' comedy Ramona and Beezus for not being nearly funny enough.

It's still a short-enough time-killer of a thriller -- not the worst of the summer, but a long way from the current state of the art.

Inception is an elegant, portentous ride, though I’m not sure Nolan is any closer to visualizing the real (dream) deal than Hitchcock was.

Off the wall? Friend, you don’t know off the wall until you’ve seen five twelve-year-old girl singer-dancers cover the Tina Turner/Phil Spector epic “River Deep, Mountain High” in the screwball kiddie dance comedy, Standing Ovation.

A generally joyless pastiche of sorcery history, imitation Potter "chosen one" Messianics and mirthless silliness, it's another in a string of recent black marks against Cage's Oscar-owning reputation.

This is dizzy diverting fun, from it's first Carell one-liner to the 3D gimmick gags stuffed into the closing credits.

All these years after Predator, these decades past the classic film, "Most Dangerous Game," that inspired this genre, it’s good to see the idea of the hunter becoming the hunted still gets the blood racing.

That humor is a the delicious underpinning to whatever melodrama happens as these five connect and clash. And that humor is what reassures us, even at its darkest moments, that no matter how things work out for the adults, these kids are going to be all right.

Yes, it's pretty much a must to have seen the first film. Where Dragon Tattoo felt like fall, Played with Fire was shot in the Swedish summer, which suits the faster pace, ramped up violence and fresh collection of supporting players -- cops, a kickboxer, and a couple of borderline Bond villains.

This colossal folly, the fiasco of the summer of 2010 - gives us all a ringside seat at the sight of Mr. "I See Dead People's" career gurgling down the drain.

The Twilight Saga comes close to that sweet spot between swooning silliness and special effects slaughter with Eclipse.

These guys set out to make a movie where they could crack each other up. At this late date, they can't even manage that.

The story is kind of all over the place, scatterbrained without being madcap (This one feels tinkered with, reshoots, re-edits.).

Dazzling, scary and sentimental.

Brolin is so damned good in the saddle, in the hat and in the part that a half-sober viewer could half forget how half-arsed this movie he's starring in is.

The combination of a flexible, funny cast, an amusing situation and a style of movie-making that embraces every happy, nasty accident make this if not the funniest, then certainly the most uncomfortable comedy of the summer.

I Am Love is a cinematic orgy, a sensual Italian feast of food, sex, guilt and grief. An intimate, quiet and even slow movie, its subtle shadings veil turbulent emotions.

At two hours and 15 minutes, the new Karate Kid takes an absurd amount of time to get to that “big match.”

The players embrace this for the lark it is. Their pleasure in going this gonzo spills off the screen.

This unblinking look at America's Red State Crystal Meth Belt is an instant Southern Gothic classic.

It begins with such promise, a kinky modernist twist on a classical sci-fi morality tale. That it degenerates into conventional, genre horror is all the more disappointing.

The mercurial Brand is spot on as the mercurial Aldous, putting over outrageously titled tunes with panache.

A dull but harmless big-screen comedy aimed at the youngest movie goers.

There’s nobody delivering the laughs in this arid action comedy.

A ditzy film that offers more evidence that good actors, good action and one-liners don’t solve the one thing missing in every movie video game adaptation – a story that makes sense.

Survival of the Dead lacks the wit of "Zombieland," the polish and punch of last winter's "The Crazies," a remake of a Romero zombie picture from the '70s.

An intricate and daft tale of love, family and revenge.

If “the gals” have to bow out, at least they try to do it in a sprint -- in their Manolo Blahniks. It’s a pity nobody told them you can’t run in heels -- in sand dunes.

Forever After still goes down like warmed-over porridge. You don’t have to be Goldilocks to think that this time they’ve cooked their Golden Goose.

Kilmer makes a worthy, if somewhat underscripted villain. And some of the bits -- MacGruber idiotically setting traps that the bad guys never fall for -- tickle. But this still feels instantly dated, a "Hot Rod in a Role Models" era.

It’s a darned entertaining way to get a handle on a sport that can seem like a bunch of cars doing circles for a crowd that seems most interested in seeing that next epic wreck.

A dark and brawny version of the Robin Hood legend that anchors itself in English history and loses some of the merriment in the process.

It has humor and a touch of charm, but plainly needed more love, more passion, more Shakespeare.

It's light in tone, feather-weight. But there aren't many laughs in it.

A movie franchise can only take us by surprise once, and by that measure, Iron Man 2 is a preordained letdown. But so much of what gave the first film its gas — is still here.

Director Thomas Balmes and his editors find moments of humor in “discoveries” or the unfettered urinating of a baby brought up without diapers.

Jackie Earle Haley, the fans' choice to take on the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of the 1984 boogeyman blockbuster A Nightmare on Elm Street proves stunningly, rousingly…adequate…for the job.

On the sliding critter-comedy scale, Furry Vengeance falls somewhere between the Chipmunks and the Chihuahua (the one from Beverly Hills).

Caine is magnificent. This is not some laughable Stallone-boxing-at-60 exercise in vanity. He's an old man playing an old man, but one who lived through experiences that both scarred him for life and prepared him for his final test.

The movie is a stupid, over-the-top comic-booky action picture with the occasional cheesy effect, oddball casting and an utterly predictable get-that-guy-before-he-gets-us plot, but Evans and a couple of his mates make it passable entertainment.

O’Loughlin is the very definition of comic dead weight. Imagine making Greg Kinnear carry half of "Baby Mama," or sending Tina Fey out with Matthew Fox on "Date Night" and you’ll get the picture.

The wow factor alone makes Oceans a great Earth Day/Earth Week at the movies.

An awkward blend of ultra-realistic violence, boundaries-bending satire and low comedy.

The new Funeral, directed by social commentator-director Neil LaBute ("Lakeview Terrace") doesn’t improve on the original, which wasn’t exactly a classic despite its classic structure.

The Joneses manages a deft blend of the sexy, the sad and the silly. And Borte doles out his secrets and surprises in ways that make it easy to keep up with these Joneses.

The characters in The Perfect Game speak old school “Hollywood Mexican.” In other words, they speak English with accents that we haven’t heard since the golden Age of Speedy Gonzalez.

There are people, powerful people, who don't want old cases dug up. It's a tribute to the story's construction that the mystery only deepens, the more Benjamin digs.

Fey flirts and Carell kvetches, Walhberg goes shirtless and Liotta eats Italian. No surprises there. What really clicks is the couple at the core.

Good looking (it was filmed in Winter Garden) but slow and bland, this faith-based tear-jerker is a depressingly unemotional affair, with writing and some of the acting so flat that even its emotionally loaded situations can’t inspire waterworks.

The Square may be played in a thick Aussie dialect that’s hard to fathom. But thanks to bravura filmmaking that never violates the classic rules of the genre, they could be household names here someday, too.

For all the impressive (but not dazzling) effects, the scattered jokes and stentorian acting (especially from the Olympians), there’s not much here that will stick with you after the popcorn’s gone. But as any ancient Greek could tell you, that’s sort of the point.

It’s not a great film, with some edge Sparks put in the novel left out of the script. But there’s real chemistry between the young lovers and an old fashioned virtue to the father-daughter, father-daughter’s boyfriend scenes.

A sloppy, raucous, time travel farce in the grown-men-gone-wild "Hangover" style, it’s a surprisingly satisfying, if not exactly LMAO, riot.

Dreamworks hired the directors of "Lilo & Stitch" to turn Cressida Cowell’s romp of a novel into an animated film and can’t be too surprised that they made, in essence, "Hiccup and Stitch."

Aniston doesn’t bring her old A-game to this. But at least she’s not quiet and reserved and no-energy, her approach to too many roles of late. Butler makes the most of his Neanderthal rut.

This is not a bad cast, but whatever wit the script aims for is lost in the queasy details director Miguel Sapochnik found more fascinating.

City Island is a light “family” romance that goes about as far as its novel location -- an island neighborhood tucked in the middle of New York City -- and a good cast can carry it.

Crass, gross and juvenile in all the best (and worst) ways, Diary is aimed squarely at a tween "don't touch the cheese" demographic. And if you don't get it, maybe you're just too old for a good booger joke.

A chilling detective tale, a horrific sexual abuse drama and an overlong, emotional, tie-up-every-loose-end melodrama that is sure to be half an hour shorter when Hollywood remakes it without the Swedish dialogue and probably without the cool Swedish edge.

Baumbach overreaches, making this character a selfish, off-putting cultural (LA) and generational scold. But Stiller, in his most “real” performance in ages, finds the function in this catalog of dysfunctions, the humanity in this humanity-hating crank.

It is a well-acted and vivid re-creation of a dark, downbeat era when "girls don't play electric guitar," and you had to be someone pretty tough and pretty special to try it.

A deadpan, darkly funny Korean murder mystery.

Green Zone isn't so much a bad movie as a misguided one.

There are a few sensitive scenes, but it’s the big blasts of raunchy that deliver its laughs.

A broad and formulaic culture-clash comedy built on fill-in-the-blank wedding comedy clichés.

The film’s tone is all wrong, the pacing is dead and the veering between sex, sadness and sado-masochistic violence is enough to give you motion sickness. It’s a bad movie.

Wonderland is equal parts Lewis Carroll and Grace Slick. It’s inspired by Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass," but also, apparently, by Slick’s psychedelic ‘60s anthem, “White Rabbit.” It’s a trip, man.

A crowded cast of some of the finest actors in the cinema act the hell out of a gimmicky, episodic, hit-or-miss script in Brooklyn’s Finest, Antoine Fuqua’s latest attempt to relive the glories of "Training Day."

Cop Out is still funnier than the dreadful later Eddie Murphy cop pictures. But it feels like an homage to a period best forgotten.

After "Zombieland," The Crazies struggles to find novelty and laughs, and must battle the overwhelming sense that we’ve been here, seen this too often and too recently to experience any real surprises.

Strip away the French and Arabic subtitles, the French-prison setting and the Muslim-messianic title, and A Prophet, opening Friday at The Enzian, would still be the grittiest prison thriller in years.

The title’s a trite metaphor and the surprises are thin. But the sleepy scenery and charming performances – Stewart escapes her vampires and reminds everyone what the fuss used to be about – keep The Yellow Handkerchief from blowing it.

It’s not bad, but as Scorsese, America’s greatest living filmmaker and film history buff should know, even Hitchcock came up short on occasion.

It’s not one of Polanski’s masterpieces, but The Ghost Writer doesn’t dilute his reputation as a master of suspense.

The matter-of-fact way everybody involved faces this supernatural horror drains most of the chills right out of it.

For what it is and for whom it is intended, it’s not a bad movie, just an indifferent one.

It’s an American "Love Actually" without the warmth that writer-director Richard Curtis stuffs into his all-star confections, without the wit, without much love, actually.

The polished production sometimes touches and amuses despite its naïve “love conquers all” script.

Hallstrom and his low-heat stars can’t find the pulse of this corpse.

Basically a bloody buddy picture that tries too hard.

An odd duck of a thriller. Quiet, talkative, with the occasional explosion of violence, it has ghosts and characters philosophizing, quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald or blurting insensitive non-sequiturs.

Bell, a petite, pretty blonde, may or may not have the Meg Ryan-Julia Roberts-Sandra Bullock goods. When in Rome, a leaden variation on that rom-com recipe, fails utterly to make her case.

Profane, profanely silly and blasphemous to beat the band, Legion begins well before plunging into the abyss of tedium.