It helps that Davis is insanely charismatic onscreen, but her ability to showcase the vulnerability and scar tissue beneath this human embodiment of an extended middle finger gives the movie a semblance of depth.

Props to Kutcher for going to surprising, painful places. There's something haunted in his portrayal that hits hard and sticks.

When Leguizamo lets go, this cautious crowd pleaser of a film takes on a defiant shine that shows just where the rest of Wong went wrong.

Until Richard Wenk's script drives the characters into a brick wall of pukey sentiment, it's a wild ride.

Sam Rockwell has yet to find a movie as good as he is (Moon comes closest). He's still looking.

Any resemblance between this Bad Lieutenant and the 1992 Abel Ferrara landmark is purely in the head of the dude who thought up the title.

Director Barry Levinson and screenwriter Mitch Glazer lucked out getting Bill Murray to play Richie Lanz, a loser who makes losing hilarious. Murray just kills it.

The Saint leaves star Val Kilmer and director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games) fighting to enliven an exhausted character.

Which one of these women is the most irredeemable? Coming to grips with that question is what gives the flawed but fascinating Every Secret Thing its power to haunt.

A recent showing of Burton's artwork at New York's Museum of Modern Art attracted long lines and critical brickbats. Maybe that's why Big Eyes, for all its tonal shifts and erratic pacing, seems like Burton's most personal and heartfelt film in years, a tribute to the yearning that drives even the most marginalized artist to self expression no matter what the hell anyone thinks.

In Portman's dynamic performance you can see strength and vulnerability warring for Anne's soul. In this bedroom view of history, it's that image that sticks.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is all feedback. It talks loud and says next to nothing.

Given Helgeland's rep as a screenwriter (including an Oscar for 1997's L.A. Confidential), it rankles that 42 settles for the official story. The private Robinson, who died of a heart attack at 53 in 1972, stays private. We stay on the outside looking in. Let it be.

It's all in the telling. Gruen provided grit and pungent detail. The movie settles for gloss.

Daybreakers, despite the star presence of Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, is a B movie, with all the disreputable low rent, lowbrow pleasures that implies. I'll take that over pompous any day.

If you're ready to go with the hit-and-miss flow, you'll laugh your ass off.

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

Only near the end, when MacArthur and Hirohito meet in person, do we get fireworks. And that's thanks to Jones, who makes sure this old soldier will never die in our memory. As for this tepid movie, it just fades away.

A brightly-colored, dizzying pinwheel of 3D animation in which nothing much happens. Sounds like summer is here early.

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.

If it's hip to be square, then this racehorse movie is the ultimate in cornball cool.

I'm a sucker for caper movies in which impossibly clever con artists do impossibly dangerous things while looking impossibly gorgeous. I could feel Focus trying to be that caper. I'm not asking for nirvana, such as Hitchcock's "Notorious" or David O. Russell's "American Hustle," just a taste of sexy escapism. A taste is all you get in Focus, but it'll do till the whole enchilada comes along.

Rogen and Byrne are crazy fun company.

How did Cammell convince a studio to back a movie in which Julie Christie is violated by what looks like a copper Rubik's snake? Better not to ask, or to dwell on the film's less savory aspects, and soak in its moments of visionary hysteria, including the pulsating geometry of images borrowed from experimental filmmaker Jordan Belson.

There are even times when Black seems to be letting Crowe and Gosling make the whole thing up as they go along. Not a bad thing.

Bahrani is a gifted filmmaker. But he shoots himself in the foot by throwing in a contrived plot device that creates drama at the expense of credibility. Suddenly, we're isolated from a film that had made us believe. It's a breach of trust that comes at too high a price.

The dialogue is witty and spiked with delicious malice. At least it is when Pierce delivers it.

Race is at its best when it fills in the corners of a story we only thought we knew.