This is a terrible movie. It has no business being as terrible as it is, because it boasts a perfectly acceptable horror premise and a perfectly acceptable cast.

Hall Pass attempts to take the Farrellys' harsh humor and bring it into harmony with what has become the modern comic style, which is to be coarse but not absurd, to be brutally honest but real.

It's hard to decide what's worse about this feral clan residing in Brighton, England: their unspecified criminal enterprises, their penchant for bloody vengeance or their twisted family dynamic.

That irresistible thing - a movie about the making of a movie - combined with a bit of a history and a political message.

For the most part, it's fairly pleasant and interesting enough to be there.

This was obviously a labor of love for Soderbergh, and a fitting memorial to the artist.

Best reason to stay home and rent "Disturbia": I Am Number Four is a little better and makes loads more sense than "Eagle Eye." But neither has the sass and pluck of "Disturbia."

Neeson has a way of getting upset - a frantic purposefulness - that fills viewers with both empathy and anticipation: He's so miserable that we care.

It's a disappointment to see the teen pop star hop in a tour bus. This is a boy who should be traveling across rainbows on the back of a unicorn.

In addition to being funny and endearing and having a lively script and lots of nicely observed performances - is something of an education.

As weird as it sounds.

Aims to make epic drama of Algeria's battle for independence, but there are moments when you would swear you're watching a "Godfather" knockoff.

Never fails to be engrossing. That's because Soldini brings us vivid characters, and gets all the details right.

A very funny romantic comedy that nicely combines Adam Sandler's acerbic sweetness with Aniston's down-to-earth warmth.

Through it all, Tatum tries like crazy to Act. His eyes pinch. His brow scrunches. Most of all, he clenches his jaw, little creases of muscle flexing below his ears as he labors to emote.

If you were ever wondering what "Die Hard" would have been like if Neil LaBute directed it as an art film, prepare to enjoy Lovers of Hate.

Sanctum is by no means a badly made movie, but it has the feel of one of those dramatic re-enactments made exclusively for Imax theaters.

In creating his modern homage to the classic film, Im has twisted all the heated melodrama into a satiric - and in the end, surrealist - attack on the terrors of the polished upper class.

Some of the movie probably will mystify viewers not steeped in Middle Eastern history and culture, but a good deal of the humor can be appreciated by anybody.

Biutiful exists, at its best and beautifully, in that space that's hard to define, between the outside and the interior, action and thought, body and soul.

If the movie packs a weaker punch than the original, it has less to do with the action sequences than the script (by Edmond Wong, son of Raymond, who wrote the first), a flimsy affair with subpar villains.

The best part about the movie is the way it shifts focus, starting as an observation of the animal and then subtly morphing to the point of view of Nénette, who passively experiences a jumble of voices that start to run together.

To the extent that it's original, The Mechanic is insane, bordering on gloriously insane.

For all the hellfire histrionics and well-timed jump scares, there is actual, admirable intellect behind The Rite.

Giamatti and Pike are backed by a strong cast, including Minnie Driver, lots of fun as Barney's Jewish princess second wife.

As Russell Boyd's remarkable cinematography emphasizes the dwarfing grandeur of the surrounding topography, Weir shows how the corresponding smallness of individuals is compensated for by the grandeur of their aspiration.

Solid performances, and a sincere faith in the dignity of the average working stiff, save it from getting too preachy.

Rao avoids high drama, and while there is humor, the film's tone is one of melancholy.

The movie is just good enough to make us want more and to understand what's missing.

A gutsy movie, in that Leigh says something about life that nobody really wants to believe, and he says it forcefully: There is such a thing as "too late."

This is a remarkable movie: lovely, slow-paced and almost silent, rich with pathos and deft comic gestures.

There's nothing here but a concept and a marketing and merchandising strategy, at the center of which somebody - oh, no - had to come up with an actual movie.

Despite bursts of hilarity and an A-list cast, this is a dark, difficult, weirdly existential film - like some seriocomic spin on "I and Thou."

Dumont makes movies that almost nobody wants to see. That doesn't make him a great filmmaker, but he's a great filmmaker all the same.

A tough slog through emotional swamplands. It's murky when it needs to be clear. But Hedlund is the big news here.

A captivating mix of formality, ambiguity and offbeat humor. On the surface a simple fable, it's actually much more.

Baughman and O'Hara's documentary spews out so much information in just 111 minutes that the movie would have benefited from a longer run time and tighter focus.

Extraordinary and beautiful.

It's the kind of fun and quirky film that you don't see very often in art houses this time of year.

It's not bad. It's cute.

As a viewing experience, the film is by turns heartrending and stultifying, but mostly stultifying.

The entertaining work by Spacey and Pepper is a good thing because the film has problems, including an utter lack of subtlety.

A meditative state of a movie. While shorter-attention-spanned moviegoers should stick to "The Fighter," this is an interesting and enjoyable entry on the opposite side of the genre.

This is the first Focker installment not directed by Jay Roach, who did a good job balancing the yuks with the more outrageous gross-outs. That comic-revolting parity shouldn't be much of a challenge for "American Pie's" Paul Weitz, and yet the skeevier bits aren't especially funny.

Whatever the intention, Somewhere, in its odd, detached way, is compelling viewing.

If there's one big difference between this version and the old, it's in the attitude toward violence. The new version may be more graphic, but it doesn't present violence as inevitable or necessary, just ugly.

It's dark fun, in the spirit of "Gremlins."

Dunst is not the only person doing quality work in All Good Things, but she is the only one worth watching.

The film is confusing and awkwardly timed, and it drags.

This sequel is also goofy, also eye-popping - see it in Imax 3-D if you really want to fry your optic nerve - and also weakly scripted. And yet the sheer size of the thing works against it: The effects are absolutely spectacular, but they blow the goofy-cheesy quotient straight through the roof.

This is a cute movie, a kid's movie, and a rather good one.

Ultimately, The Fighter loses its courage and betrays the terms of its own story by fashioning an interpretation designed to please the people it portrays. It does a switch on us, by changing its focus from Micky's character to Micky's career and then pretending it was really about the career all along.

Megamind, it turns out, is a villain to root for.

The comedy never really takes off because it's phony.

Narrated by Lomborg, the movie uses lecture excerpts, clips of terrified schoolchildren and interviews with (mostly) like-minded scientists to get his points across.

Once it gets rolling, Unstoppable doesn't pause for breath.

As is appropriate in a well-crafted and meticulous movie, the acting is strong down the line.

No matter how guilty our knucklehead-protagonist's victims supposedly are, it's difficult to maintain a rooting interest.

An arty, ruminative and slow-paced film that's being marketed as a big ol' alien-invasion flick. Just don't expect an invasion flick.

Waste Land is a film about recycling, but it's far more intriguing than the average eco-documentary.

There are many things to admire about this movie, but the main one is that it doesn't compromise.

Overall, this is a nice introduction to an amiably dour tunesmith who once wrote that "all art aspires to the condition of Top 40 bubblegum pop."

This is compelling stuff, but Lilien is less successful in trying to link Pale Male's story to his own.

The King's Speech is a warm, wise film - the best period movie of the year and one of the year's best movies.

Esrick spent 10 years on the film, and the result is a comprehensive portrait.

There aren't that many songs this time - just a handful, reprised ad infinitum. You get to sing most of them, so I'm sure you've noticed how bland they are.

What Dunham lacks in polish, she makes up for in her ability to observe her generation, with the hardest truths coming at her own expense.

Mocking Tinseltown is a pretty exhausted subject, and even Jaglom, a genuine insider, has a hard time making it fresh.

Suffers from some of the deficiencies common to first features. It is sincere and earnest but the product of an assumption that the milieu itself is compelling enough to command an audience's attention.

It's big, perfectly cast and entertaining in every way, but more than that it feels like a generous public event.

There are all kinds of bad movies in the world, but it's really only stardom that can create the exact variety of cinematic abortion we find in The Tourist.

The third and most uneven film adaptation in the series.

Not a mediocre film. It is, by turns, a great and awful film.

This one is a long, archetypal journey that screeches to a halt a few stops short of its destination.

It's clear by the end that one Ruth Gruber is worth more than 100 pundits fighting about partisan politics.

Denis' viewpoint and sympathies are sophisticated, complex and humane.

If you have even a passing interest in outsider art, you owe it to yourself to see Marwencol.

A tonally confused, fitfully entertaining film about a pathologically two-faced man.

It's excessive and psychologically imprecise, coarse where it should be refined and too much like a David Cronenberg horror movie in places where restraint and intellectual rigor are called for.

The Nutcracker in 3D will be barely recognizable to fans of the beloved holiday classic. Imagine watching Tchaikovsky's ballet after taking a handful of peyote - on a day when all of the dancers call in sick and the orchestra decides to play a different set of the composer's works.

It's still a spirited look - well written, beautifully acted, full of uplift - at lovably cheeky heroines on the march for a little respect.

This small film's accomplishments are many, but not the least is its ability to take a human story and frame it as a parable, without losing a bit of credibility or irresistible heart.

Spitzer was undone by his zipper, but as Client 9 makes clear, he was also undone by his refusal - or inability - to make nice with some of the state's most powerful characters.

The film is engaging but also has a certain creaking familiarity.

If The Next Three Days were just a little more mindless, it might have been more joyful.

Probably the world's first jihad terrorist comedy, Four Lions is a daring, brilliantly conceptualized film, but like the bumbling bombers of the title, the execution tends to be hit-and-miss.

127 Hours, about an unimaginably unbearable experience, is pretty much an unbearable experience of its own. And yet, it must be said, it's exceptionally well made.

Roger Michell directs it as though it were an uproarious comedy, but the laughs are light, and the story's real appeal lies in its behind-the-scenes look at the manners and politics of morning television.

Watts is the movie's soul, thoughtful and deep-revolving.

The effect is like watching an opera without music. Or a musical drama in which no one sings. These departures from a realistic convention never feel like static set pieces - that's the great success of the film and of the poems themselves.

Aselton gets a lot said in 78 minutes. I think the main thing she says is something never overtly spoken, that life is essentially a lonely experience - even when we're surrounded by activity, and even if we never shut up.

There have been many adultery movies over the years, but Leaving has some aspects that make it different and interesting.

It's a highly entertaining, big-budget, kick-butt kung fu movie, the best of its kind since Jet Li's "Fearless" in 2006.

"Hornet's Nest" isn't the best of the three (that would be the first film, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), but it's the most challenging.

While the film adopts a sometimes jaunty tone, the fact is that gerrymandering is bad news, assuming you believe that elections should mean something.

Jackass 3D has its moments, but it lacks the ingenuity and hilarity of the previous films - no doubt in large part because of the aging process.

What's much more fascinating and enriching is Eastwood's Olympian vision, the sympathetic and all-encompassing understanding of the pain and grandeur of life on earth.

It's an amazing story, one that would seem too far-fetched if it weren't true.