Fitzgerald’s influence could have crept in there by osmosis, and whatever other charges you want to level against Spring Breakers – such as incoherence, plotlessness, salaciousness and mind-numbing monotony – it has no lack of high concept.

If there were any justice in the world, The Cat's Meow would be the beginning of the rehabilitation of Davies' image.

Kentis and Lau succeed in doing what all filmmakers worth their salt strive to do: They make us care about their characters.

Paine seems delighted to root for all three companies and essentially declares a three-way tie, which may be fine for the moment.

Thrumming with anguish and erotic vitality, Eden paints a heartbreaking portrait of a newly affluent country (freed from dour priests, whiskey-soaked revolutionaries and shawl-clad women) afflicted with emotional growing pains.

A genuinely exciting thrill ride that only occasionally feels bloated or painfully dumb.

The film's intimacy never feels fake, it's sporadically and unpredictably funny (I didn't exactly enjoy the cacophonous trumpet duet of the "1812 Overture," but I won't soon forget it), and the nonprofessional cast is surprisingly good.

Le Besco gives an unforgettable performance in a movie that's sweet and sad, formally near-perfect but never cynical.

May not be a very grand picture, but it's a gently satisfying one. And if it brings Smith's book just a few hundred more readers, it's admirably done its job.

Roughly speaking, the characters in Kit Kittredge may be stereotypes, but they're stereotypes with soul. And they live in a very real place.

Linklater gets great performances from his young cast, and you'll find yourself thinking about the characters and their travails well after the movie's finish.

Beneath its movie star clowning, its awful-but-relatable heroine and its lightweight gags, Burn After Reading poses an implicit challenge to its viewers: Can you figure out why this comedy isn't very funny? Could that be because its central proposition is that the people in the theater are just as stupid, just as gullible, just as eager to be deceived as the people on the screen?

The movie is straightforward in a way that makes it feel less manipulative than it might.

Made with confidence that borders on bravado, and sometimes it shows more conviction than it does grace.

Scorsese is pushing, I guess, for something that combines a '40s horror-thriller with a contemporary psychological tragedy. What he ends up with is more like a Hardy Boys mystery directed by David Lynch.

I'd rate Bubble at no better than a C-plus for artistic achievement and a D-minus for audience appeal. In one sense, it accomplishes its goals efficiently by making you feel, in less than 80 minutes, as if you've gotten permanently trapped in the dead-end, trailer-park lives of its working-class characters. I've never been so grateful to get out of a theater, turn my cellphone back on and plug myself into a $4 Starbucks latte.

Along the way, it even gives the adorable manchild Michael Cera the chance to reinvent himself as a possible sex symbol -- in other words, it allows him to be a man.

It's entirely sincere and genuinely not terrible. Burns knows the milieu of his suburbanized New York Irish-American characters at a bone-deep level (enough to induce powerful flashbacks in someone of my background), and the tone of regretful, tragicomic, low-key melodrama he strikes is just right.

Isn't profound, but it is perceptive...it's a pile of fun.

So full of winning performances and so disarmingly uncynical in its affection for its characters, it manages to leave you with a Texas-size grin on your face anyway.

Both oversimplifies and overcomplicates Moore's and Lloyd's vision, but it never cuts to the bone. It's a movie drawn with big, bold strokes and very little feeling -- a tracing-paper exercise masquerading as a masterpiece.

Prince Caspian is elaborate filmmaking, all right. It's the magic of the human touch that's missing.

As far as bored and cynical, playing-out-the-string comic-book action sequels go – hey, Iron Man 3 is a pretty good one!

Weaver obviously relishes playing this feral, sarcastic new Ripley, and her pleasure is infectious.

Even though Brody works hard -- and he's got those magnificent drooping eyes, which suggest both innocence and a seen-it-all-before weariness -- his scenes don't spark, and the movie drags around them.

Another way of reading a movie like this is that it channels our ancient hatred of nature while recognizing that it’s essentially nostalgic, and that the occasional hungry ursine cannot compete with the animal we really have reason to fear.

Kevin Smith's comic-religious fantasy turns out to be the sweetest hot-potato movie imaginable.

If Jackie Brown lost 45 minutes, it might have been a snazzy entertainment. As it is, it wears out its welcome well before the end.