The plot is borderline ridiculous and certainly doesn't stand up to close (or even not-so-close) scrutiny, but there's a level of entertainment to be had watching it unfold in all its strangeness.

Enough conspiracies and secret codes to make Dan Brown sit up and take notice. All this and more can be found in David Robert Mitchell’s bizarre, trippy Under the Silver Lake, where the plot at times seems as perpetually stoned as Andrew Garfield’s lead character.

It ends up feeling a little like warmed-over "Strictly Ballroom" without Baz Lurhmann's over-the-top sense of style.

On the whole, this is another disappointing animated effort and it resides considerably lower on the totem pole than this year's current non-live action champion, "Ratatouille."

The cinematic equivalent of cotton candy: certainly not unpleasant, but not especially satisfying despite the sweet taste.

The arrival of the uncut Godzilla is a great boon to monster movie fans, but will have limited appeal to others.

Director/co-writer Gillian Robespierre is nowhere near as self-indulgent as Noah Baumbach but she’s aiming for the same audience.

Ultimately, the greatest fault with Killing Zoe may lie in Avary's ambition. In trying to do too much (crime film, love story, psychological thriller, and dissection of an alienated generation) with a ninety-minute motion picture, his focus becomes blurred. Regardless, with a style that alternately recalls John Woo and Sam Peckinpah, and a tone that is nihilistic in the extreme, he has created a movie that, while obviously flawed, isn't easily forgotten.

The key term here is "fairy tale," because, although the movie occasionally tries for dramatic moments, they're overplayed, undercooked, and divorced from reality.

The only thing that differentiates it from far too many other uninspired rom-coms is that some of the material is funny and there is an occasional edge to the repartee. Beyond that, however, it's a cookie-cutter movie, and the cookies are pretty stale.

Bland and forgettable - a romantic comedy with affable characters and some funny lines, but where love never really takes flight. It fizzles when it should sizzle.

Narratively, The Song of Sway Lake doesn’t have much going for it but when it comes to capturing the tone of a specific locale, the approach of director Ari Gold is without peer.

There's probably enough content here to warrant a three-hour movie but Good People is only 90 minutes long.

Although it’s being marketed as a love story, The Aftermath is more about grief and recovery than romance. In fact, the film’s illicit relationship is a cold, passionless affair that generates as much heat as a dying ember in a snowstorm.

Although the first half still works – largely due to the performance of Anne Bancroft as the iconic Mrs. Robinson – the second half is a mess with only a couple of funny lines to recommend it.

The problem with Beasts of the Southern Wild is that, like "The Tree of Life," it seeks to integrate its small, very personal story into a much larger, more ambitious tapestry.

I enjoyed The Osiris Child enough that, when it stopped with the complete story half-told, I felt a flash of irritation. For that reason, until more is made (if more is made – a prospect that seems questionable at best), I can’t really recommend The Osiris Child.

It's often diverting and occasionally funny, but it's ultimately inconsequential.

Into the Woods left me out in the cold. The long-gestating cinematic adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's fairy tale-infused Broadway musical, Into the Woods can claim a clever screenplay and a few enjoyable performances but little else.

The final half-hour of Broken Embraces is littered with facile contrivances and plot turns worthy of a soap opera. It's almost mystifying, and more than a little frustrating, to watch a movie cruising at such a high level suddenly suffer a complete breakdown and lose too much altitude.

Enjoyable, but it's a shallow enjoyment.

Booty Call isn't a source of nonstop laughs, and there are a lot of gags that fall flat, but, on those sporadic occasions when something works, the result can be hilarious.

Unlike the Harry Potter movies, The House with a Clock in Its Walls fails to find the sweet spot for cross-generational appeal.

The most important part of any thriller - even one as upper crust as this - is the resolution, and that's where Notes on a Scandal falls on its face. The ending itself isn't bad but the single act leading to it is unforgivable.

It's a fast-paced motion picture that fails the "reality test" but maintains a certain intensity for its entire running length. It's entertaining in the same way that an episode of "24" is entertaining.

Despite being sold and marketed as a thriller, the most interesting aspects of Shot Caller are the dramatic ones.

Despite rave reviews, film festival awards, and an Oscar nomination, Spellbound comes across as little more than a marginally compelling documentary -– the kind of movie that would be at home on PBS.

For the Watchmen fan, this may be as close to the Holy Grail as a motion picture could come. For everyone else, a sense of frustration and disappointment is not unwarranted. Watchmen is many things but it is not the Next Great Comic Book Movie or the film that will advance graphic novel adaptations to the next level.