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.