Black Swan is ridiculously over the top, but in a way that makes it fascinating to watch.

While we await the definitive documentary about the glut of garbage, Waste Land reduces this global catastrophe to touchingly human scale.

An utter shipwreck, a would-be adventure with meager rations of magic and a listless crew.

A would-be light thriller that's so deficient in the genre's essentials - such as witty dialogue, intriguing characters and surprising yet credible plot turns - that you're embarrassed for everyone involved.

In skewering the neuroses of New York bohemians, Durham has left us too little to care about.

Tangled is lovely to look at, but if you're not a pre-teen girl, you may be distracted by the split ends.

It's a worn-out show-business fairy tale piggybacking on a nonexistent trend.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is slower and stranger than any of the previous films, simultaneously raising hopes for a haunting finale while dimming hopes for a magical one.

A road-trip comedy that somehow renders both promiscuity and racism harmless. While we're soaking up the sunny surroundings, we're getting nowhere.

For a nation at war with its own values, Fair Game is a compelling, pertinent and scrupulously true political thriller in the honorable tradition of "All the President's Men."

Mainstream moviemaking at its most proficient, with a zippy script, comfort-food casting and a breakout performance by a deserving star.

In the end, the movie is still a poetic injustice.

His (Eastwood) first boring film.

The story is sustained by the stubborn love between the siblings and by the conviction of the two fine actors who portray them.

This true story does a great service by honoring the memory of 22 brave men and women and by dramatizing the internal debates within the French population. But in staying true to life, it sacrifices some of the pacing and clarity of a conventional thriller.

It's intellectual snack food, satisfying for a little while but always leaving you hungry for more.

Stone isn't for everyone. But for all its shortcomings, it is courageously original.

Red is an insult to our memories and to our intelligence, an unfunny farce whose veteran cast is cashing a retirement check.

Gilchrist ("United States of Tara") is immensely appealing as a kid who's just a bit too wrapped up in himself to grasp that perhaps his problems aren't insurmountable.

Only a heartfelt performance by Diane Lane rescues the film from abject mediocrity.

Nowhere Boy is too astutely written and directed to go to predictably melodramatic extremes.

A film that's at once timely and timeless.

With its mix of true-blood romance and full-moon madness, Let Me In should hasten the twilight of the twerpy pretenders.

It's a wholly successful sequel - audacious, entertaining and bracingly pertinent.

Weaver is a natural as the imperious Ramona, but the rest of the cast is flattened by the script, particularly White, who is just window-dressing in a movie that could use the rude humor she's displayed elsewhere.

Waiting for Superman raises important questions while wearing a big red heart on its chest, but inconvenient facts are its kryptonite.

Allen has been criticized for leaving some of the plot lines up in the air and several characters in the lurch. But he seems to be making a point: Neat Hollywood endings are as phony and dangerous as Cristal's ramblings.

Because of some sentimental backspin, Affleck doesn't quite hit it out of the park, but he may provoke the green monster of envy in lesser directors.