Elba's performance is commanding and physically meticulous. As he ages through the film, he takes on the stiff gracefulness of the elderly Mandela, so familiar to us from news footage.

If, while watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, you start wondering why Ben Stiller is acting strange, the answer comes during the closing credits: "Directed by Ben Stiller."

Grudge Match at its core is an affront to the cinema gods, an attempt to capitalize off two iconic films for a few cheap laughs.

The story is too slender for its two-hour running time, and the pace is lugubrious, as though everyone in front and behind the camera were depressed. But the biggest obstacle is the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix), who is almost without definition.

It is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year.

Lenny Cooke is humbling, as well as a cautionary tale for young people thinking they can make the big time.

Every time it threatens to devolve into sentimentality or cynicism, someone is there to take the reins.

The Coens, with this film, are like people who fly all the way to Paris on vacation and then eat at McDonalds every night, because that's what they know. Why bother making the trip at all?

American Hustle is David O. Russell's best film, one that finds him in that ideal zone of spontaneity and complete control.

Yet it's very funny, a disappointment only to those who expect to see something bold and new.

The film is too intelligent and well-crafted to dismiss and too good to hate. Some people will love it, and at worst, most people will like it a little.

Results are all that matter, and the result here is that The Desolation of Smaug fails in almost every way, as a story, as an adventure, as a piece of art direction and as a visual spectacle.

The veteran filmmakers, siblings Lisa and Rob Fruchtman, accentuate the positive, while acknowledging the obstacles. They also realize Rwanda's trauma can't be denied - a handful of women recount harrowing stories of their experiences during the genocide and its aftermath. Some have parents or husbands still in prison for war crimes.

Only when it makes the claim for Page as a pivotal figure in American culture does it overstate the case and become tiresome.

It's dull in the precise way that life can be dull. To watch it is like sitting in on a staff meeting, listening to people talk on and on and on. Professors are used to talking nonstop, and in a few cases in At Berkeley it's rather astonishing to hear them repeating the same ideas over and over, instead of just coming to a point and stopping.

It shambles and ambles, seemingly without focus or pattern, from one thing to the next. Yet at the same time, it's predictable, not from moment to moment, but in its outlines.

Not so much a documentary as a rambling interview, almost all done in animation.

Oldboy is an immersion into pure twistedness. The purity of its twistedness is its saving grace.

Black Nativity is a just-OK feature film that, as an hour-long television special, could have had the makings of a classic.

Homefront has craft and humor behind it, but not much in the way of inspiration. Think of a dessert with lots of calories and no nutrition.

Philomena is a wiser movie than it seems, with much to say about justice and forgiveness and the healing of wounds over time. Actually, it says next to nothing about any of those things, just implies its messages with a light hand.

The studio made a great film.

It's the story of a young married couple undone by a family tragedy, but the film loses its way, at one point turning into a political harangue.

Nowhere near the worst film of 2013, but it is definitely the most exhausting.

An authentic piece of Americana. There's no lying or condescending from this director. Nebraska feels pure.

Best in its first hour, when it concentrates on the politics and the specific horrors of Panem. It becomes more conventional in the second half and loses steam, but it's always heading somewhere.

Armstrong acted like a demon, but it becomes clear there were very, very few angels associated with the sport in the 1990s and early 2000s.

By the end you can't help but wonder whether it was a good idea to keep the youngsters under camera scrutiny for more than 12 years.