Lindberg, who wrote a book on the subject called "Punk Rock Dad," is at the center of this sweet, revealing and proudly foulmouthed ethnography on rock and the modern dad.

So the situation is fraught, without being clear-cut; in other words, interesting.

The movie's bereftness of invention can be measured by how no story element builds on another. Instead, Happy Feet Two is plotted so that a bunch of disparate things happen, until it's time to end the movie.

About as loony and soapy as a movie can get. In other words, it's about as loony and soapy as the novel, and I say this as one who obsessively consumed all four installments in Stephenie Meyer's mega-selling series.

The movie itself is a worthy thing, too, but it's not as good as Clooney is here, which is to say, it's not great.

He was so good at his job he was awarded an honorary knighthood by the British and the Iron Cross II by the Nazis. Talk about playing both sides!

Kaurismäki stalwart Kati Outinen, as the old man's silent and ailing wife, is the key to the movie, even though she appears only sporadically. Something in her timid, understanding and impassive gaze, which is Kaurismäki's gaze as well, lets us know that she sees things in the old man that we don't see.

A fly-on-the-wall look at the inner workings of the famed Spanish palace of avant-garde gastronomy that closed its doors in July. If you're passionate (and open-minded) about food, you'll be fascinated.

Herzog, as ever, is obsessed most of all with human nature: Into the Abyss explores our deepest urges to love, and live, and kill.

If only Lars von Trier took into account that audiences might actually want to enjoy Melancholia, rather than endure it, or sift through it, or submit to the director's will, he might have made something extraordinary.

Though the Jill problem is too insurmountable to ignore, almost everything else in this comedy succeeds.

It's watchable and reasonably entertaining, to be sure. Eastwood doesn't make movies that are hard to sit through. But something in the film's point of view is off, not at cross-purposes, not contradictory, but incomplete, irrelevant and ever-so-faintly ridiculous.

The actors keep their clothes on, but everything else is naked in Like Crazy, a romantic drama that makes other romantic films look obvious and calculated in comparison.

A curious thing about "Revenge" is that auto executives who might have been portrayed as villains in Paine's earlier documentary are likable characters here.

Let us recall that the first film was, in its blithely vulgar way, hilarious. And let us demand a moratorium on coked-out-baby jokes, which seriously kill the buzz.

Coming now, today, In Time is not just satisfying. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's important, because that would overstate it, but it certainly feels like part of the national conversation. It arrives in theaters at a time when people are camped out in New York saying the same things as the people in the movie. It's weird the way films often anticipate the near future.

That the movie is leisurely and unconventional is all part of its charm, too - until it isn't anymore. The movie is a tale of corruption, but then it's not. It's a love story, but no, not quite. Later, it flirts with becoming a great journalism tale, or at least a whimsical journalism tale, but that vein leads nowhere, too. Nor is it much of anything else.

Alas, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life loses steam and grows more perfunctory as it wears on.

So if you don't mind, I'll just go back to believing that someone named Shakespeare (whoever he was) wrote Shakespeare's works. And I'll just go back to regarding them with awe.

All in all, the 3-D animations wow without gimmickry, Banderas purrs without peer - and it's a cheerful movie.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a strange case, a drama that's disturbing and yet inert. Writer-director Sean Durkin builds an atmosphere of dread, which means that he persuades us to believe in the characters and in the central situation. But he doesn't build interest.

The plot is somewhat pedestrian and the dialogue needs more zip. But it's amusing to watch the Bayaka poke good-natured fun at the gangly Larry, who has only their best interests at heart.

Emily Watson, who always brings a special grace to the screen, gives a multilayered performance to the role of Margaret Humphreys.

Besides the fact that the film is flabby (way too much time is spent on history), its efforts to tie subliminal messaging to a vast array of political, media and pop cultural events turn the proceedings a little hazy (or a lot hazy, depending on your worldview).

Fabrice Luchini is one of the delights of world cinema, and in The Women on the 6th Floor he finds a role ideally suited to his odd mix of fussiness and sensitivity.

Mighty Macs further distinguishes itself by, for once, giving a fair shake to nuns, who are treated with respect both in the performance of Ellen Burstyn, as the mother superior, and of Marley Shelton, who plays the assistant coach. It's about time.

Chandor's writing goes to some darkly interesting places, and there's fun to be found in individual performances.

With The Way, writer-director Emilio Estevez has made a respectable failure. What's respectable - and undeniable - is that this is a sincere effort to make a film of sensitivity and spiritual richness.