Often I couldn't see the character for the metaphors.

Strangely, wonderfully, The Artist feels as bold and innovative a moviegoing experience as James Cameron's bells-and-whistles Avatar did a couple of years ago. Retro becomes nuevo. Quaint becomes cool.

Even if you get lost - in the spyspeak, in the codes, in the comings and goings of grim-faced men with satchels full of documents they should not have - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is worth getting lost in.

Spielberg and his team - composer John Williams, as always, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, screenwriter Richard Curtis - never forget their mission: to pull at heart strings, jerk some tears.

And if there's a problem with Tintin, it's that it's too big and booming.

This beautifully taut and terrifying thriller is faithful to its source in just about every way that matters.

Virtually every set-up and set-piece in this extravagantly tedious adventure is misleading, or worse, irrelevant.

A pitch-black comedy steeped in bitterness and regret.

Has a certain cartoonish vibe. That's OK, because Brad Bird's brand of toonage (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) owes much to the rigors and traditions of live action, not only in the way he references other films, but also in his visual approach - sweeping, swooping camera pans, wide vistas, jolting perspective.

Beautifully photographed by Crystel Fournier, Sciamma's film has a floaty weightlessness (as opposed to the heavyosity of "Boys Don't Cry") that neither judges nor pathologizes Laure.

There are big, jaunty gusts of music, and there are big, jaunty gusts of acting: the Heath Ledger-esque Alexander Fehling pumps up his Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with brash, boyish verve and stormy emoting.

McQueen finds the exquisite tension between the brother wanting to disconnect and the sister longing for connection. To paraphrase a line of Sissy's, it's a good movie that comes from a bad place.

While The Sitter isn't that dumb, or dreadful, there really isn't much going on here.

It would be inaccurate to say there are plots in New Year's Eve. There are a number of setups, and these get shuffled through faster than a card dealer in Atlantic City.

And talk about transcendent parenting moments: When Lindberg's girls pull out their Barbies, the Pennywise singer goes and gets his Devo doll to play with them.

Williams never defaults to mimicry. Her Monroe doesn't have the breathless whisper and quivering lips/quivering hips quality of the Marilyn impersonators. Her Monroe is a lightbulb on a dimmer, suddenly bright, and just as suddenly, indistinct.

'As long as there are Muppets," muses a little felt guy named Walter, "there is still hope." And indeed, there is something hopeful about The Muppets - Disney's rollicking reboot of the late Jim Henson's furball franchise.

What about the kids and families who have no connection to Méliès, little familiarity with Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton? Will Hugo keep them in their seats? I'm not sure.

Although it's set on the same frozen continent, Happy Feet Two is worlds away from its predecessor.

Into the Abyss is a true-crime drama, to be sure, but in Herzog's hands it becomes something much more: an inquiry into fundamental moral, philosophical, and religious issues, and an examination of humankind's capacity for violence - individual and institutional.

Feels more like a postscript than a probing, provocative documentary.

Clooney has never been better, subtler, more deeply rooted in a performance than he is in The Descendants. And he's funny, too.

Worthy of mention is Carolina Herrera's design for Bella's wedding dress, sophisticated and demure in the front and Pippa Middleton sexy, and proper, in the back.

No walk in the park, Tyrannosaur is a character study steeped in the British (and Irish) tradition of social realism, and the experience of watching this skillfully made film is, well, exhausting.

In short, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a charmer.

By turns pleasant and preposterous, The Greening of Whitney Brown is a reverse Cinderella tale for tweens.

Most disappointing, Eastwood's decades-spanning portrait reveals little about the man himself.

This heavy-handed muddle of a cop thriller is just impossibly bad.

The music, of course, resonates. And so does this exquisite heartbreaker of a story.

Think of it as"Airplane"! with controlled substances.

Devoting more time to the setup than to the follow-through, Tower Heist doesn't really build suspense so much as it builds impatience - for the thing to be over.

Though one gets a sense there is part of the story Marks isn't telling, we do pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

An airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory.

In Time is that kind of movie: Philip K. Dick for knuckleheads.

Jazzy and colorful, full of men and women in swell clothes driving cool cars, The Rum Diary has a bit of a seedily exotic Graham Greene vibe, and Robinson moves things along at a nice, casual clip, even in the film's more overheated moments.

Moves from its protagonist's dream state to her memories to her waking present in imperceptible shifts - the effect is disorienting, at first, but ingenious.

Yelchin and Jones are up to the challenge of suggesting much by doing little.

Melancholia is a remarkable mood piece with visuals to die for (excuse the pun), and a performance from Dunst that runs the color spectrum of emotions.

One wishes that Chambers had more gracefully integrated the stories of the individual players into this celebration of Rush.

Take Shelter, which, it should be said, boasts haunting but seamless visual effects, is a movie for this moment in time, this moment in our lives.

It's hard to feel compassion for these Masters of the Universe. I'm not even sure Chandor wants us to, but if he doesn't, then what's the point?

An astoundingly senseless thriller.

Watching Shepard work his pony down a snaking mountain pass, playing a mandolin and singing the blues, or seeing him sitting, stone-still, beneath a railroad water tank, waiting for something to happen - these are scenes to be cherished, from an actor who has found the soul of the character he's playing.

The best thing about The Thing, the third - and the least interesting - big-screen adaptation of the John W. Campbell Jr. short story "Who Goes There?", is its closing credits.

With ambitions greater than comedy and results that fall short of character study, The Big Year is neither fish nor fowl.

As remakes go, Footloose is fine, serving up slightly fresher batches of cheese and corn. But why? Why?

Besides Paquin, who delivers a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the maddeningly inconsistent Lisa, also wrenchingly fine are Jeannie Berlin as the best friend of the deceased and J. Smith-Cameron as Lisa's actress mother.

It is earsplitting, crowd-pleasing, and, no doubt, 'bot-pleasing, too. If you told me I would get emotionally and viscerally involved in two machines punching the hard drives out of each other, I would tell you you were crazy. I would be wrong.

A heartfelt project, scrappy and engaging, The Way has its way with audiences despite, not because of, its sentimental excess.

This taut cautionary tale explores the dark side of American politics. And leaves the viewer to wonder - if anyone's still wondering - is there a bright side?

Craig's film is well-served by solid writing, brilliantly executed slapstick comedy, and nicely choreographed scenes of ultraviolence - not to mention amazing chemistry between Tudyk and Labine.

If illuminating dawns and dusks had basked Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in a rosy glow, the mopey cuteness of Restless would have been too much to bear.

By the end of Machine Gun Preacher, its title character has become a cartoon.

In some scenes, Faris' sheer velocity gives the movie liftoff. In others, it doesn't hurt that Evans, who looks like the very young Alec Baldwin, and has the sonorous voice of Mark Feuerstein, is the film's sex object.

It's half hilarious, half serious; all poignant.

A must-see for Pearl Jam fans - and for folks keen on gleaning insights into the pressures that come with megastardom.

Like some murderous version of "Working Girl," the ruthless exec and the seemingly naive underling go at one another - turning the film, at a pivotal moment, into a satisfying whodunit.

Between the earnest boy, his playful mammal, the film from actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith is a winning family entertainment.

Loaded with careening car chases and rooftop runs, glass-shattering shootouts and exploding fireballs, Killer Elite offers more than enough to keep action junkies happy.

Funny, furious, and full of front-office drama.

Bellflower has plenty of rough edges and it suffers from a bad case of hipper-than-thou-ness. But it's a triumph.

Corinne's journey begins with an act of blind faith. The movie ends, but you have a palpable sense that the journey does not.

It fails as a gripping home-invasion thriller.

In describing the conflict of a woman who has it all without enjoying it all, Pearson's book had teeth. McKenna's screenplay has only a smile. But is it ever good to laugh.

Plays like an exalted episode of "Miami Vice" or a stealth version of "Shane."

Circumstance is more interesting for its cultural views than for its insights into love, sex, family angst, and rebellious youth.

The two leads, Edgerton and Hardy, pull off their respective roles - rising above the cliches and the melodrama - with ferocity and focus.

By the time this globe-hopping, movie-star-crammed disaster saga - directed with petrifying efficiency by Steven Soderbergh - comes full circle, you'll never want to touch a subway pole or elevator button or ATM again.

Viewers get very little about Madoff himself. While the film is primarily about Markopolos, it makes little sense without much insight into his nemesis.

Until Seven Days in Utopia sucker punches you with a surfeit of faith-based platitudes, its upbeat brand of golf mysticism isn't altogether unappealing.

Completely unappealing people.

What the three pairs of actors lack in semblance (or resemblance), they make up for to a great extent in their performances.

Colombiana isn't the last word in action movies, but it's a fun ride. And so wrong.

The Hedgehog is full of heart, passion, and human longing - but also a good dose of existentialism. Think of it as Sartre's "Being and Nothingness"-meets-Dr. Seuss.

Despite the potential for some supernatural grandiosity, the tone here remains understated and quiet, and Gainsbourg's performance feels lived-in, and deep, and right.

While this hugely likable cast is, indeed, hugely likable, no one's sweating things at all. The comedy's relaxed, moony rhythms imbue it with a certain charm, but can result in a certain stop-and-start awkwardness, too.

Joltingly graphic and atmospheric (Nixey and his crew at least know how to set up a few good shocks), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark fails to involve us in any meaningful way with its characters.

The story, inspired by Bolkovac's experiences in Bosnia and her subsequent book account, is dynamite. Alas, Kondracki's direction fizzles. While she elicits a tense and eloquent performance from Weisz, the first-time filmmaker fails to maintain a consistent tone. Her film samples multiple genres.

As in "An Education," Scherfig's settings are unshowy, imparting period flavor without overwhelming what is, ultimately, an underwhelming film.

Exhilarating and tragic.

With the exception of a few stakes and crosses jumping from the screen, some bloody sprays here and there, and one creepy, claustrophobic car ride, the 3-D glasses are a hindrance, not an enhancement.

It's the lysergic soap opera going on among Kesey, Neal Cassady, and various pals, scribes, spouses, and hangers-on piled onto the rainbow-hued school bus that's at the heart of this rollicking road pic.

Director Steven Quale is economical: He ditches plot altogether, delivering instead nothing but set pieces. He does come up with a few genuinely creepy moments of Hitchcockian edge-of-your-seat suspense and a few very inventive deaths.

Part of Glee's charm has always been its innocent amateurishness, its just-folks aura. The live show clings to that conceit - with some pyrotechnics thrown in.

A meditation on mortality, on loneliness, on the way technology and narcissism have intersected to create a fascinating monster, The Future is all of this and more. What Frank Capra would have made of it, who knows? But he would have liked its star.

The dialogue is smart, screwball, sublime.

Eisenberg (who starred in director Fleischer's far better Zombieland) does his usual Eisenbergian thing, more slacker and less hacker, but still hitting the same notes. And Ansari squawks and yelps, like a parrot with a grudge.

Like its characters, it has its faults. But overall, it is a movie of imaginative sympathy that gets into the skin of its characters, into their hearts, and, ultimately, into ours.

This is a straight-up gangsta film, yo. Spare us the phony redemption.

It is painful, it is funny, and it marks the remarkable debut of Wysocki.

Like the kids in detention, The Change-Up wants to offend your sensibilities. It sets new records for scatological humor and profanity.

A breakneck French thriller, Point Blank is so ridiculously successful at keeping its momentum going - and keeping the audience tense with suspense - that it's likely to leave you with your heart pounding, gasping for breath.

A shamelessly fun B-movie with A-movie effects.

It's not that Salvation Boulevard is bad: It's quite funny at times and has some good performances. But it's so predictable it has no bite, either as social satire or as slapstick comedy.

Excellent performances make the movie effective. Yet the flashbacks have a depth and resonance largely absent from the modern scenes.

Another Earth has heft - emotionally, intellectually.

This is one of the smarter, more honest scripts to be filmed in quite some time. And Jenna Fischer, star of "The Office," gives one of the smarter, more honest - and vulnerable, and tough - performances by an actress on the big screen in an even longer stretch.

Neither fish nor fowl (nor extraterrestrial), and that's a problem. Craig, handsomely craggy, plays it straight, and like Eastwood's Man With No Name, he doesn't have much to say.