The half-ingenious, half-ludicrous third act makes observations about class and legacy worth thinking about. It calls to mind Jeff Nichols's "Shotgun Stories."

A good Woody Allen flick is a thing of joy these days and, at times, Blue Jasmine is even a great one, close to being an equal to 2005's "Match Point."

The best kind of anti-war propaganda film, calm in feeling and mood, yet truly terrifying in showing the scourge of our age: terrorism, which can strike anybody, anywhere, at any time. It's also a love story, and a film about having it all. And then in an instant, losing everything.

Imagine the most overdone, Philip Glass-style horror movie music playing over glossy footage of a university art class, and you have some idea what your eyes and ears are in for while attending The Time Being.

A certain sloppiness prevents The To Do List from entering the female coming-of-age pantheon of "Sixteen Candles," "Clueless" and "Mean Girls."

The film's flintiness and initially subdued nastiness set it apart from most other action films about the thin line separating cops from crooks.

It has such a strong aesthetic about it, it's almost as if The Wolverine functions as its own stand-alone film, rather than as a piece of the "X-Men" mythology.

Mostly loud and graceless, despite some arresting hyperbolic visuals that deserve an action film of actual soul and purpose. It's simply too generic at heart to justify director Schwentke's delirious, sidewinding, arcing, snap-zooming and whip-panning anti-gravity camerawork.

This masterpiece about propaganda, cinema and vanity as instruments of power and terror ends on an excruciatingly sustained, righteous money shot: a monster who could have been a good man suffocates on the truth.

The two leads are appealing, and the pace is brisk, but the movie never aspires to be more than a cookie-cutter creature feature — the kind of film that can be washed back with a pint and then forgotten in the morning.

An absorbing coming-of-age drama that suddenly, pointlessly self-destructs with an onslaught of cheap ironies and overkill.

Not only is this take on human relations unoriginal, it's also sophomoric and blatantly untrue.

The desperate straining for laughs isn't nearly so off-putting as the abrupt tonal shift Girl Most Likely makes as it trudges toward its conclusion.

The Conjuring is as toothless as it is because it's two different kinds of boring. The film's plot is explained exhaustively whenever loud noises aren't blaring, and random objects aren't teasingly leaping out at you from the corner of your eye.

I did my homework and watched the original "RED." It was just as stupid as this movie, yet I liked it a little more.

Ultimately, Beneath is better than your average Roger Corman clone because it is more serious than trivial.

As an achievement, Computer Chess is laudable. As a film, it's missable.

Turbo is just strange and lively enough to make you wish it were better.

If I were nine years old, I would see the monsters-versus-robots adventure Pacific Rim 50 times. Because I'm in my forties and have two kids and two jobs, I'll have to be content with seeing it a couple more times in theaters and re-watching it on video.

Like so many horror films in recent years, V/H/S/2 appears more lightweight the more it tries to impress with its inventiveness and grotesquerie.

This is thematically rich material; unfortunately, like a few too many dramas from the past decade, The Hunt resists expressive uses of style, opting instead for gently bobbing handheld camerawork. It's an actor-friendly approach.

More disappointing, the performances just aren't quite as funny and focused as they should be. Willard and Kind are both very funny guys when they are used right, but they both seem a bit at sea here, and their characters never come into sharp focus.

The result is a movie that ambles and takes its time, never revealing where it's going.

In many ways, Fruitvale Station is as green and earnest as "Boyz N the Hood," a debut film made by another alumnus of Coogler's alma mater, USC: John Singleton. Yet its ambition is closer to that of the most important American indie film in at least a decade, Patrick Wang's "In the Family," a must-see that's now available on DVD.

As Roger Ebert noted in his review of "Grown Ups," they are "well-meaning people you don't want to see again any time real soon." My guess is we won't.

Wait for this to show up where it belongs — on cable.

For all its miscalculations, this is a personal picture, violent and sweet, clever and goofy. It's as obsessive and overbearing as Steven Spielberg's "1941" — and, I'll bet, as likely to be re-evaluated twenty years from now, and described as "misunderstood."

While I remain disappointed that the sequel gives me a subdued Gru and an uneven pace, I keep remembering things about Despicable Me 2 that make me smile. For every meh moment, there's almost 2 well-conceived gags or lines.