Wake up, people. Tarantino lives to cross the line. Is Django Unchained too much? Damn straight. It wouldn't be Tarantino otherwise.

What saves the day is the spidery, schizoid Gollum, again performed by the great Andy Serkis through the craft of motion capture.

Just stay away. It's awful.

The actors can't perform miracles. Hot dogs are served in the final scene, but trust me, Hyde Park on Hudson is no picnic.

As an actor, Burns has worked the Hollywood game from "Saving Private Ryan" to "Alex Cross." But his core passion is for making indie movies without studio interference, guerilla style. Because he takes his films personally, so do we. The Fitzgerald Family Christmas is one of his best.

Murder is just another day at the office for corporate America, and the film hammers that theme home with diminishing returns. But the acting is aces, especially Pitt mixing it up with the superb James Gandolfini.

Hopkins and Mirren are acting pros in stellar form. There's no way you want to miss the pleasure of their company in a movie that offers a sparkling and unexpectedly poignant look at how to sustain a career and a marriage.

Writer-director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) probes the psyches of two people in crisis. His hypnotic film means to shake you, and does. Schoenaerts reveals unexpected layers in Ali. And Cotillard delivers a tour de force of unleashed emotions. She's astonishing.

Lee uses 3D with the delicacy and lyricism of a poet. You don't just watch this movie, you live it.

The story has been filmed many times, but never with this kind of erotic charge. Knightley is glorious, her eyes blazing with a carnal yearning that can turn vindictive at any perceived slight.

It's Dead! It's Dead! By which I mean, It's Finished! It's Finished! Five movies have been squeezed out of four Stephenie Meyer Twilight books. All of them redefining cinematic tedium for a new century. And now, It's Over! It's Over! No more Twilight movies EVER! I'm so joyful that I might be overrating The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 by saying it's not half bad.

Silver Linings Playbook is eager to sting instead of soothe. It's one of the year's best movies because Russell makes you laugh till it hurts.

The result, glitches and all, is a great American movie.

This is Bond like you've never seen him, almost Freudian in his vulnerability. And a dynamite Daniel Craig, never better in the role, nails Bond's ferocity and feeling.

Grace notes abound in A Late Quartet, a small, shining gem of a movie that works its way into your heart with insinuating potency of music.

You might bitch that Flight levels off after its shocking, soaring start. But you'd be missing the point of an exceptional entertainment that Zemeckis shades into something quietly devastating – not an addiction drama, but the deeper spectacle of a man facing the truth about himself.

Moore brings a video junkie's passion to the movie game, and it's hilariously infectious.

For all the spectacular settings and visionary designs, Cloud Atlas left me feeling disconnected. Sad. But that's the true true.

Just see it. This movie will take a piece out of you.

Holy Motors, fueled by pure feeling, is a dream of a movie you want to get lost in. It's a thing of beauty.

Don't forget Winstead when making a list of the year's Best Actress contenders. Yes, she's that good.

Just so we're straight, Ben Affleck doesn't merely direct Argo, he directs the hell out of it, nailing the quickening pace, the wayward humor, the nerve-frying suspense.

Blood splatters, heads explode, and McDonagh takes sassy, self-mocking shots at the very notion of being literary in Hollywood. It's crazy-killer fun.

The chance for delicious satire melts away quickly in Butter, a spoof without oomph.

This hot mess got booed by the snobs at Cannes, but there's no denying its profane energy.

Getting creeped out has never seemed this totally cool.

Kendrick is terrific, taking a role that could have slid by on snide and building it into something uniquely funny and touching.

Lacing tremendously exciting action with touching gravity, Looper hits you like a shot in the heart.

Perks deserves points for going beyond the typical coming-of-age drivel aimed at teens.

End of Watch gives you the savage whoosh of being on a job that can get you killed. Sins of cop clichés can be forgiven when a movie pays honest tribute to police on the line.

Eastwood and Adams are just so much damn fun to watch.

Radnor and Olsen are so funny and touching you want to say happythankyoumoreplease. What you get is frustratingly less. Still, to the movie's refreshingly uncynical credit, you feel for them.

It's instructive to note what a killer actor Richard Gere can be when a movie rises to his level. Arbitrage is such a movie, a sinfully entertaining look at the sins committed in the name of money.

Written, directed, acted, shot, edited and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own.

Headland can write zingers that would make the cruelest bridezilla blush. And Caplan's treatise on the art of the blow job is time-capsule worthy. Sadly, Bachelorette is a comic cocktail that goes heavy on the bitters. That's no way to end a wedding.

In a rare instance of truth in advertising, the movie actually is a good time.

Lawless is a solid outlaw adventure, but you can feel it straining for a greatness that stays out of reach. There's even a prologue and an epilogue, arty tropes signifying an attempt to make a Godfather-style epic out of these moonshine wars. Not happening.

No true movie junkie is going to want to miss Side by Side.

This slapstick road movie feels tossed off by people on a raunchy bender. I mean that as a good thing. The trouble with Hit & Run is that it can't sustain its trippy effervescence.

Premium Rush features fearless stunt work that shames most computer trickery. Too bad I didn't believe a minute of it.

Craig Zobel's potent and provocative Compliance is torture to sit through. It's also indispensable filmmaking. How is that possible? Check it out.

It also addresses questions of aging and neglect that Hollywood likes to run from. Langella, who's played everyone from Dracula to Nixon onscreen, is giving a master class in acting. Enroll now.

This mesmerizing mind-bender ought to prove two things: (1) Robert Pattinson really can act; (2) Director David Cronenberg never runs from a challenge.

My advice? Just go with ParaNorman. There's magic in it.

Whitney Houston deserved better than to go out onscreen with this botch job remake of a 1976 soap opera that never deserved another thought.

Like the 2010 original, The Expendables 2 is all sound and fury signifying nothing, when at the very least it should add up to big, dumb fun.

Delpy is boundlessly appealing. And Rock is acerbic fun, notably in the imaginary debates he stages with Obama. But the frenzied cross-cultural gags take the piss out of the real subject: how blood ties can turn love into a battlefield.

Hope Springs knows happy endings are provisional. What this exuberant gift of a movie offers Kay and Arnold is a renewed appetite for life. And that never gets old.

The jokes never go deep, the toothless bites at the system leave no marks. It's only the wild-card energy of Ferrell and Galifianakis that keeps you on the ticket.

Gilroy stages two riveting shootouts involving Marta at work and home. And there's a killer chase scene in Manila as the bad guys try to knock Aaron and Marta off their speeding motorcycle. It's all sound and fury signifying nothing except a desperate need to feed a franchise.

Since the new Recall is totally witless, don't expect laughs. Originality and coherence are also notably MIA.

What really lifts Celeste and Jesse Forever above the rom-com herd, besides breakout star performances from Jones and Samberg, is the movie's willingness to replace clichés with painful truths. It's irresistible.

Then there's the movie itself, which should be crazy, stupid fun but settles for just stupid.

A fresh and unexpected documentary that plays like a nail-biting mystery and a ticket to ride the whirlwind where art and commerce do battle.

The result is something you won't see coming. Don't look for sweet and embraceable. This movie is not afraid to show its claws. Like the spirited teamwork of Kazan and Dano, Ruby Sparks is honest, deep and true.

Even when the film goes too far over the top to be saved, McConaughey mesmerizes.

The sheer scope of Nolan's vision – with emotion and spectacle thundering across the screen – is staggering. The Dark Knight Rises is the King Daddy of summer movie epics.

A movie that offers hard speculation and harder truths. You won't be able to get it out of your head.

Webb never loses touch with the film's emotional through line. And he allows time and space for Garfield and Stone, both stellar, to turn a high-flying adventure into something impassioned and moving. A Spider-Man that touches the heart. Now that really is amazing.

Journeys, shot on the last two nights of Young's 2011 solo world tour, is essential Neil Young.

There's no way you won't be captivated by Wallis, chosen ahead of 3,500 candidates to play the tiny folk hero who narrates the story. Her performance in this deceptively small film is a towering achievement.

It's hysterically, gut-bustingly funny.

Pine is driven and touchingly vulnerable. And Banks, heartbreakingly good, nails every nuance in a raw wound of a role. Thanks to their teamwork, we believe we are watching people like us.

Magic Mike slowly degenerates into a simplistic cautionary fable. I didn't see that coming from a sharp observer like Soderbergh.

This is the vital city that inspired Fellini – alive and lived in. When an actor falters or a joke falls flat, Roma stays fresh and dynamic. You can't take your eyes off it.

A rousing, gorgeously animated good time.

I never rooted for them as a couple, never felt a chemistry in their bond. And in a romance, even one with tragic notes, that really is the end of the world.

The movie deserves a stake through the heart.

Relationships are killers, and this tough, tender, deeply satisfying romantic comedy from writer-director Lynn Shelton is also bruisingly funny.

The hugely enjoyable Rock of Ages is saved by its music, a tasty brew drawn from Def Leppard, Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison and Whitesnake. It's near impossible not to rock along.

With that cast, we rightfully expect fireworks. What we get is the film equivalent of a wet blanket.

Director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly keep the film humming with funny and touching surprises. And Plaza is a flat-out enchantress.

The ending isn't squishy scary or deeply satisfying. Bummer. Otherwise, Prometheus – especially in its spellbinding first hour – kicks ass so hard and often that it's impossible not to be thrilled by it.

Snow White and the Huntsman is definitely a missed opportunity. Sanders was on to something in taking the Snow White tale to its most menacing extreme.

Sy and Cluzet are superb actors who demolish stereotypes about race and social class by finding a common humanity in their characters. Acting this good forgives a lot of sins.

The top-tier cast, including Tilda Swinton as a character called Social Services, may be star overload, but each actor performs small miracles.

The effects are cheese-whizzy fun, but it's the unexpected spark between Smith and Brolin that makes MiB3 primo summer fun. Way cool.

Way to go, Battleship: Take the crassest of cynical junk, slather it in jingoism and sell it as rah-rah fun for right-wingers.

Morning sickness afflicts most of the potential mommies. For me, the movie itself triggered the vomiting.

The Dictator leaves you laughing helplessly. It starts at outrageous and rockets on from there. Screw the occasional sputter.

Powered by Simon's brilliance, Under African Skies is a cultural lightning bolt that soars on its music and an unshakable belief in the transcendence of art.

The pleasures of Dark Shadows are frustratingly hit-and-miss. In the end, it all collapses into a spectacularly gorgeous heap.

So it's a shame that in the end Madden can't keep the tear-jerking from drowning this delicate cinematic flower. The book knew how to hang tough. The movie, not so much.

Droolingly stupid weepie. Useful tip: The movie dies way quicker than she does.

The Avengers has it all. And then some. Six superheroes for the price of one ticket... It's also the blockbuster I saw in my head when I imagined a movie that brought together the idols of the Marvel world in one, shiny, stupendously exciting package. It's "Transformers" with a brain, a heart and working sense of humor. Suck on that, Michael Bay. [10 May 2012, p.74]

Cusack captures that desperation vividly enough to make you wish this was the real Poe story, which The Raven onscreen leaves buried alive.

Statham is still playing it safe in Safe, but vulnerability is showing through the cracks.

Drags and sags at 124 minutes. Luckily, the movie never runs on sitcom empty. How could it, with a terrific cast.

No use trying to describe Bernie. It's a one-of-a-kind inspiration. You will never feel closer to a convicted killer.

Is it the worst of the seven screen Sparks so far? Nope. My vote still goes to 2009's "The Last Song" with Miley Cyrus mothering those unhatched turtle eggs. But it's still pretty damn insufferable.

The Stooges were always better in short doses. And 90 minutes of PG nyuk-nyuk-nyuk can seem like an eternity.

Cabin is a deliciously devious scare dance that keeps changing the steps until you lose your shit and fall helplessly into its demonic traps.

Welcome Damsels in Distress, an exhilarating gift of a comedy about college, the female intellect, the limitless male ego, inventing a new dance, and suicide prevention.

The laughs that do achieve liftoff are killer. But the real kick is seeing the old gang back and ready to party.

This feeble followup to 2010's godawful "Clash of the Titans" sucketh the mighty big one.

The best social documents on film do more than show you what's wrong in the world – they make it personal. Bully does that with a passion.

I've been told the movie plays best with very young girls. That's an insult very young girls should not be forced to endure.

The film is a striking cinematic tone poem.