Mining the incest prohibition for laughs in what's essentially a light romantic comedy is a bold move, and for the first two-thirds of the movie, it works surprisingly well. But as long as the Duplasses are willing to go there, I can't help but wish they'd gone a little further.

If nothing else, it's an eye-boggling two hours at the movies and a must for Swinton completists fascinated by her recent turn toward operatic roles in odd, unmarketable films like this one and last year's Julia. She's becoming the Maria Callas of international cinema.

If I had a child near Dre's age, I'd drag him or her out of "Marmaduke" and into The Karate Kid--but not before requiring an at-home screening of the still unsurpassed original.

Like Cooper's lady-killing character, Face, The A-Team is utterly convinced of its own lovability even as it strains our credibility, abuses our patience, and punishes our eardrums.

There's no buildup, no narrative arc, just one scene of comically debauched partying after another.

Like most movies in which a central story element doubles as a toy tie-in, Prince of Persia isn't overly burdened by ambition.

Like "Spartacus," this movie is engaging because it's actually about something: the love of learning, the clash between science and religious faith, and the grim fact that political change often proceeds on the foundation of mob violence and genocide. Agora engages more effectively with this kind of big historical idea than it does with human drama.

And it's true that this movie's absolute tone-deafness, its complete disconnection from our current economic and geopolitical reality, by moments achieves a perverse Warholian profundity.

The SNL skits get laughs from combining the grandiose scope of an action movie with the cramped, bare-bones stage of a live late-night comedy show. It's funny because it looks dinky, cheap, and fake. By showing real buildings really exploding, and real throats—or a believable simulacrum thereof--ripped open by real bare hands, MacGruber commits the deeply MacGruber-esque mistake of shooting itself in the foot.

As a portrait of a subculture few non-Hasidim ever get to glimpse, it's funny, deft, and sharp. The movie's first half goes to great trouble to establish the texture of life in Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn; the second half is a rushed and unfocused tour of the Amsterdam rave scene.

Pretty much ill-conceived from the ground up but saved by a couple of strong performances and a wealth of well-researched period detail.

Looking for Eric is easily the most commercially accessible of the Loach films I've seen, one of the lightest and least somber. It's also wildly structureless and uneven.

It's beyond absurd that the makers of superhero movies haven't grasped this yet: When an actor's body and face aren't visible beneath a costume, it could be anyone under there. Casting the likes of Downey and Rourke and then imprisoning them in jointed refrigerators is resource-squandering of the highest order.

If you can watch all 17 seconds of the "surprised kitten" video on YouTube without even a twinge of longing to crush said kitten with love, skip Babies. If you find yourself clicking "replay" to watch the kitten again, pre-order your ticket now.

I wouldn't go so far as to recommend this movie, but if you were tied down and forced to watch it, you wouldn't necessarily have to chew off your own leg to get away.

Its visual splendor more than makes up for its intellectual poverty.

Since Kick-Ass' whole premise is that comic-book violence, when enacted in real life, has real consequences, it seems a strange choice to layer Tarantino-style splatter onto the Y.A.-novel setting and play the whole thing for laughs.

An old-fashioned movie-movie, the kind that's substantial enough to go out to dinner after and discuss all the way through dessert.

It's cast, down to the smallest role, with genuinely funny performers, people who understand how to time a joke, deliver a setup, underplay a deadpan glance.

Clash seems to be deliberately steering clear of camp, when in fact it should have steered straight into camp and stepped on the gas.

The title is so genius! My standards were so low! All this movie needed to make me laugh were four guys in a Jacuzzi, a fuchsia/turquoise color palette, a steady stream of dumb jokes, and a little bit of heart. Unfortunately, the missing ingredient is the last.

Chloe remains engaging for longer than any movie this schlocky and overwritten has a right to be. But the movie loses what little goodwill it's managed to build up by the last act, which feels clumsily grafted from a completely different film.

Putting them together was a bold casting move, but as good as they both are in their roles--she (Gerwig) in the flustered, galumphing mode of early Teri Garr, he (Stiller) in the clenched and mumbling one of late Woody Allen--they never quite seem to be sharing the same movie.

The wispy insubstantiality of The Runaways can't be blamed on its cast--Fanning, Stewart, and Shannon are all good in their roles, even if their range is never tested. Ultimately, maybe it's OK that there's not much below the surface of this great-looking but shallow movie.

A Hitchcock-ian murder mystery that unfolds into a maternal melodrama worthy of Joan Crawford, shot through with bursts of black humor. Bong's ability to sustain three or four different tones in one movie without betraying the emotional truth of the story is nothing short of amazing: He can pat his head, rub his stomach, and break our hearts all at the same time.

To suggest that a lone, brave soldier could have set things right with a little amateur sleuthing seems like cinematic wish-fulfillment, an insult both to the intelligence of viewers and to the troops.

A film adaptation should, of course, treat its source material as inspiration rather than dogma. But did Burton have to get the books so ENTIRELY wrong?

It lacks the fevered sincerity (and the political timeliness) of Romero's original, but it's tightly scripted, cleverly cast, consistently scary, occasionally funny--everything you could ask from a well-made and completely unnecessary remake.