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.

There's such a thing as smart angry, and such a thing as stupid angry, and after seeing Inside Job, audiences will be smart angry.

The title promises a film that never really materializes: something nastier, smellier, more nihilistic than the skittish morality tale at hand.

The tone is both satiric and serious, zany but heartfelt, and for a while - maybe 20 minutes - all seems well.

Ultimately, Stone is a haunting film about what it feels like to be really and truly lost.

The idea is intriguing - an inflatable sex doll comes alive and experiences the world with wide-eyed innocence - but Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Air Doll" is only partly successful. The film's poignant depiction of human loneliness is undercut by saccharine notes and a drifting tone.

This breezy action comedy is a noisy affirmation that life goes on after 50, that retirement doesn't mean redundancy, and that nobody - young or old - can wear a long cream evening gown like Mirren.

In Secretariat, the fictionalized bits are simple exaggerations - broad, Disneyish adjustments in races and other realities.

As vile, unredeeming and thoroughly unpleasant experiences go, I Spit on Your Grave at least has one thing interesting about it. It's a document of the most paranoid fantasies that urban, Northern people have about a rural Southern people.