Unfortunately, the characters are so programmatic, the premise so ridiculous and the situations so far-fetched even if you accept that premise that no energy can be built, and the little that's there can't be sustained. Red Dawn is a vigorous but pointless exercise.

As a movie about mental illness, Silver Linings Playbook is more lightweight than lighthearted. But thanks to Lawrence, it does one good thing most movies don't do. It actually gets better as it goes along.

You might hope for a bit more depth on the kids Dellamaggiore profiles - perhaps she could have homed in on, say, two of them - but this is really nitpicking. The film is well made and genuinely inspirational.

You will look in vain for some definite logic to Holy Motors. You could see it as a metaphor for the actor's life, or a story about the desire to transcend the self. Anything you decide is fine.

You know there is something seriously wrong with Anna Karenina when you start rooting for the train.

Worst of all, in promoting its hero's eccentric journey as a voyage of healing, the movie replaces emotional precision and intellectual honesty with syrupy sincerity and insistence. It turns boring and cute and begs us to love it.

The Details has a light tone, but it's anything but light in purpose. It's committed and passionate, one of the most perceptive and morally persuasive movies of 2012.

The real acting laurels go to Klein, who is both an adult and a child - by turns smart and not so smart, brave and fearful, caring and full of disdain.

Skyfall is a different kind of Bond movie, one that works just fine on its own terms, but a steady diet of this might kill the franchise. One Skyfall is enough.

The experience of watching Daniel Day-Lewis in this role is nothing less than thrilling. This is Lincoln. No need for a time machine, there he is.

Dangerous Liaisons isn't necessarily a work of art, but it's a guilty pleasure for sure.

There's no getting around it. Though it's not without virtues, The Loneliest Planet may try the patience of even the most dedicated lovers of art film.

Lévy gets expectedly strong work from the veteran Devos and outstanding performances from Sitruk and Dehbi.

Fascinating stuff.

The movie feels more like a thriller and a mystery than a documentary. Perhaps someday, someone will be inspired to dramatize this astonishing story.

For those willing to enter this world and pay attention, A Late Quartet provides distinct and uncommon satisfactions.

The plane crash in Flight must go down as one of the strongest single scenes of 2012: It's extended, detailed, technically and emotionally realistic, and beyond that, it reveals character.

Don't fault Thirlby, who does as much as she can with the material. Krasinski is pretty good, and DeWitt and Ennenga are outstanding. The direction is decent, and the film is handsome. But it's finally frustrating, enigmatic in a way that suggests emptiness more than mystery.

A quiet, introspective look at how a volatile same-sex-marriage referendum played out in Maine, presents a balanced, journalistic approach to this divisive issue, but there's no doubt who leaves the biggest impression: the opponents of gay marriage.

The Sessions is moving. At times, it's even erotic, which is unexpected, to say the least. It sends viewers out of the theater with a heightened sense of the physical and a real feeling for all the things that sex means in human life.

Well written but weakly executed, it's hard to imagine anyone is going to cherish the film, if they even remember it in three months' time.

So at the very least, audiences will come away from Chasing Mavericks with a deeper understanding of surfing and an appreciation for surfers.

Despite some weaknesses, a sense gradually emerges in this film- not just an idea, but a strong feeling mixed with an idea - about the dance of good and evil over time.

The film doesn't see any contradictions between the man and his work, which is folkloric, mostly upbeat, often humorous. Both art and artist are outsized and entertaining, and that's about all that Bel Borba Aqui has to say.

It's a sumptuously mounted melodrama that aims to make a big statement about big themes, but a stilted quality in the filmmaking drags it down.

This is human drama at its most intense and universal. This is the rare film that can change the way you think and see the world.

The movie is achingly slow, and by the time it's over, the story is about where it should have been after about 45 minutes. Then it ends just as it gets good, or as it's starting to.

Jarecki takes a highly original approach to create a compelling, thought-provoking look at a highly relevant and controversial topic.