If all this sounds like too much whimsy to bear, be forwarned. There is whimsy everywhere.

That's kind of the aesthetic that Stanton is going for: over-the-top pulp. But there's something generic about the digitally rendered Martians, and there's a corniness to the dialogue that keeps the audience from any kind of emotional attachment to the Tharks and Zodangans and their ilk.

It's the powerful emotional punch their films deliver - and this one is no exception - that elevate the game, that make them so satisfying, so worthwhile. The Kid With a Bike grabs at the heart.

The filmmaker, whose career took off with a very different sort of Holocaust film, 1990's Oscar-nominated "Europa Europa," understands that most of these stories arrive at a point of unspeakable, incomprehensible horror.

Undefeated is undeniably inspirational stuff.

A lazy assemblage of sketch-comedy raunch, mock-schlock TV ads, and ideas that even the writers of "Mall Cop" and "Observe and Report" would have tossed.

The problem is that these stoic warriors infect Act of Valor with more wooden acting than you'd see at a ventriloquism school.

David Wain's riotous, raunchy, and more than a little raggedy showcase for Rudd's improv genius and Aniston's airy groundedness. He is gut-busting funny, she gently ticklish - ideal comic rapport.

The film's focus on the contest between the two agents does throw the film off-balance.

Brian Cox is especially good, and slippery, as Menenius, a Roman senator.

Writing with her sister, Karen, Jill Sprecher rigs up an elaborate cause-and-effect comedy of errors, with Kinnear's predatory protagonist as both perp and victim. I won't say more than that, but Thin Ice is deeper than it first appears.

As lovingly written as it is beautifully rendered.

A superb, violent, jarring and daring documentary.

By detailing the allegiance between Tutsi Muslims and Christian Hutus, and the fatwa issued by a Muslim leader forbidding his followers to participate in the massacres, the film is hopeful rather than horrific, even as it describes events of impossible savagery and hate.

The greatest lacrosse movie of the 21st century - and, unless I'm mistaken, the only lacrosse movie of the 21st century.

Chronicle is full of smart writing that isn't too smart.

Madonna the director deserves a script better than the one Madonna the screenwriter handed off to her. The movie is full of incidents that don't quite cohere into a story - kind of like a Power Point presentation without a throughline.

Safe House rockets along, taking a familiar formula and making it work - hard.

Ready-made for Valentine's Day, The Vow is, like the offerings at Cafe Mnemonic, a total sugar overload.

Valérie Donzelli's Declaration of War deals with issues that may scare audiences away. Don't let it.

The humor and chops are there, but the story isn't quite.

The Woman in Black has lovely period atmosphere. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much else besides atmosphere.

Perfect Sense is a very conventional love story wrapped into a slightly more quirky, apocalyptic yarn and lightly dusted with a touch of true originality.

There are no good guys in Miss Bala, just bad guys of different stripes.

Albert Nobbs is a quiet, minor-key work. The period finery is Masterpiece Classics-y, the parade of upper-crust and lower-tier eccentrics predictable. But Close's performance as this poor, wounded fellow resonates with depth and poignancy.

The real 3-D experience of the season is Pina, Wim Wenders' shockingly beautiful and moving tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch.

It's small. It's real. And it's deeply moving.

The Grey, whose clipped title, grim swagger, and lost-in-the-outback themes conjure up visions of that Alec Baldwin/Anthony Hopkins classic, "The Edge," devolves into a predictable man-against-nature, and man-against-fellow man, affair.