There might be a great movie about any of Hoover's triumphs and secrets, but not all at once.

As far as sophisticated caper flicks go, Tower Heist is oceans away from George Clooney's crew. Compared to other recent comedies, it's pretty light on the laughs.

Has something for everyone, if everyone is looking for young nuns taking showers, a department store Santa dealing weed, a coked-up infant crawling on the ceiling and Danny Trejo as the father-in-law-to-be from Hell. I didn't think I was looking for that but found it. And heaven help me, it wasn't bad.

Thompson's fans will embrace its twisted verbal dexterity, romantically imagining the author feverishly pulling strings from the beyond.

The most succinct evidence that Shakespeare was a fraud is offered by Derek Jacobi in prologue and epilogue, alone on a Broadway stage before a rapt audience. As usual in matters of the Bard, the play's the thing.

At least the latest movie about the financial meltdown doesn't make the same mistake as the last one. It also doesn't prove that a fictional film can explain the downturn's causes and effects better than a documentary.

Niccol fashioned an uninspired and downright dull sci-fi gimmick and doesn't even explain how it happened.

Cena handles rough stuff like a pro, and his poker-faced wisecracking isn't bad. But he probably shouldn't quit his day job.

To borrow just a few of Aleichem's words that are ingrained in Jewish culture: "It could be worse."

It's a nice movie, and can certainly be inspirational for the proper audiences.

They're an entertaining foursome, and Estevez guides them through lovely scenery, clever sight gags and personal confessions with leisurely skill.

Frankel's movie is as refreshing as a walk in the woods and surprising as a chance encounter with the best that nature can offer.

This Thing is purely for the gorehounds, and they aren't likely to leave impressed.

Wormald won't make anyone forget Bacon, but he dances better, and without a stand-in. Hough's dance ability is well-known, but she also displays flashes of acting skill.

Machine Gun Preacher comes alive only when Sam is pulling a trigger, which is most of the second hour. You can find the same thrill from watching a grindhouse descendant like "The Expendables" on cable TV.

Real Steel is sci-fi without the science, and the fiction is strictly 20th century, straight out of Rocky knockoffs.

As a director, Clooney makes his most straightforward movie yet, although it's static at times due to the stage origins of Willimon's material.

I wouldn't even DVR What's Your Number? if under house arrest and starved for entertainment. I've got this movie's number, and it's zero.

It's a quiet story, without many emotional outbursts and no villains. Parts of Higher Ground are dull, honestly. But the movie always feels honest about its subject.

It's irreverent about cancer and that could be inspirational. And it's surely one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen all year.

Director Charles Martin Smith presents the kind of movie that gives squeaky-clean a good name.

Buckle up for a bumpy ride but one that a road warrior like McQueen would hitch in a heartbeat.

Christensen plays him with Lecter-like intensity; the unsettling calmness of someone capable of anything.

Warrior is a surprising gut punch, a modern-day "Rocky" saga with two mixed martial arts pugs trying to beat, choke and kick the system.

In addition to being one of the finest golf movies ever, this film raises the bar on faith-based cinema.

The performances are spot-on, with former Tampa resident Morgan Simpson scripting a showcase for himself as Jefferson, and Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) as the enigmatic stranger, proving again that he's more than just a not-so-pretty face atop an intimidating body.

Curled up at home with the lights off and DVD player running, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark might be passable fun. Spread over a movie screen, the film's modest ambition gets dwarfed by expectations, especially after paying for a ticket.

Certainly amusing, but it never accelerates past one-note characters playing out separate personal crises in ways that aren't surprising.

Conan the Barbarian has its small, insipid pleasures, if you're in the mood.

Some ideas simply work better on book pages, rather than on film where illogic is exposed.

Another Earth is stealthily effective, with silences often counting more than words.

30 Minutes or Less merely puts together actors with only one funny talent each, making them do it over and over again.

For the most part, the performances can raise goosebumps, especially whenever Lea Michele, Amber Riley and Naya Rivera open their mouths.

It's a movie of terrific performances and rousing comeuppances, with a side order of corn pone for the soul.

The Change-Up is the "Human Centipede" of gag-me comedies.

Feels like half of a good movie, much of it revealed in admittedly thrilling trailers.

Wang's high regard for women is intact, plus a keen eye for period detail making the 19th century sequences lovely to observe. But it's nothing we haven't seen before.

This movie, saddle sores and all, is a lot of fun.

I deferred to the wisdom of Grouchy Smurf (George Lopez): "I didn't hate it as much as I expected to. But I still hated it."

There are laughs that stick in your throat, when they aren't broad strokes shattering a forlorn mood that occasionally makes the movie feel like a companion piece to "Magnolia," or any film depicting downbeat people realizing they have more sorrow in common than expected.

Succeeds where "Thor" didn't and the "Incredible Hulk" hasn't, twice. Unlike those drags, director Joe Johnston keeps things relatively simple and pleasantly stupid.

The weight of Carlos' world shows on his rugged face, even with rare half-smiles. This is a masterfully understated performance that should be remembered during awards season.

The movie seldom bridges the gap between education and entertainment, a trait that made "March of the Penguins" a must-see multiplex experience.

It works because Timberlake and Kunis are totally in control of their damaged characters without winking at the audience, as if to say: "Aren't we cute, behaving so naughty?" Their sex is amusingly awkward, and their repressed longings more so. It's the kind of chemistry that comes along once in a generation.

Considering Parts 1 and 2 of Deathly Hallows as a single enterprise, as they should be, this is a rare franchise that just kept getting better.

Buck is a movie to be revisited again and again, like passages from a satisfying self-help book. Riding experience isn't necessary to realize how extraordinary this man and his calling are.

Sure, it's silly without shame, and predictably sentimental. But Zookeeper is the most thoroughly enjoyable movie for the entire family in theaters right now. I can't believe I just typed that about a Kevin James flick with talking animals.

The funniest comedy of degeneracy since "Bad Santa," and a career-changer for Aniston and Farrell if they'll only keep following their perverted muses. Horrible Bosses spins hostile work environments into a movie surpassing "9 to 5" and "Office Space" as the touchstone flick for disenchanted drones.

The pleasant surprises in Larry Crowne come from its side characters.

Not rocket science by a moonshot but sporadically dumb fun.

The redneck rust bucket is on screen so much that 3-D glasses should come with tetanus shots.

This is a comedy never proceeding beyond its idea pitch and attractive casting.

Ponderous and perplexing, a somberly audacious film to make viewers swoon or snore, take your pick. It is defiantly opaque, a free-form meditation on nature and nurture across millennia with a tinge of biblical grace.

Can we please get over the notion that every superhero in a skintight suit deserves a movie? Green Lantern is the latest wallet drainer emptying the comic book bench, more thudding than "Thor" and sorely incoherent.

The Art of Getting By is enough to drive a movie critic to drink. The next round's on the kid in the overcoat.

Anyone of any age can get a kick out of watching penguins slide down the spiraled interior of the Guggenheim Museum, or seeing how one of these flightless birds manages to buck nature.

Like the genre's top filmmakers - the Coens, Polanski, Hitchcock - Capotondi builds dread with wicked winks at the audience, dropping subtle surprises along the way.

Incendies is a gallery of nightly news atrocities - a bus massacre, rape, children with guns - yet it's made intensely personal under the director's steady hand.

Allen eventually gets to the heart of this matter: the allure and danger of nostalgia.

A nice but unnecessary movie for small children who can find the same level of entertainment on kiddie cable networks.

A movie of here-and-now thrills, goosed by judicious CGI effects that never overpower the humanity of the situation.

Spurlock's meetings with skeptical corporate types are punctuated by comments from filmmakers about how product placement - or in Quentin Tarantino's case, being turned down by Denny's - influences creativity.

Part two is even more gorgeous to behold, and deeper in substance.

It's deja vu all over again in The Hangover Part II, only dirtier and more dangerous, if you can imagine that.

Depp and Cruz only occasionally strike the sparks expected from two of the world's most beautiful people.

The Beaver plays like a thickly veiled confessional and plea for forgiveness. It's too creepy for comfort.

Bridesmaids is a bit of a groundbreaker... Not exactly a banner for feminism but equal time is overdue.

It's a very good performance that isn't for the "Talladega Nights" crowd and indie audiences can appreciate that.

Something Borrowed is a romantic comedy in which absolutely no one deserves to end up happy.

All that director Kenneth Branagh must do with Thor is not mess it up, and he succeeds. But that isn't enough. The results aren't as exhilarating as the first "Iron Man," but Downey can't play every superhero.

Fast Five is brawny dumb fun, nothing more but that's enough.

The plot is a piffle but Ozon's presentation is gloriously romantic.

Nothing about Koolhoven's film is stunning, but it's a solid piece of work, occasionally feeling as tense as life-and-death situations with Nazis should be.

For the love of movies, stay away.

Reese Witherspoon can do a lot of things as an actor but playing a damaged-goods Depression era dame isn't one of them.

As a cinematic effort, Atlas Shrugged: Part I is competent; in service to Ayn Rand's epic novel, it's less so.

Bursting with color and rippling with samba rhythms, Rio makes you wonder why animated films haven't spent more time in Brazil.

Redford proves that at 75 he can still choose meaningful projects and deliver them with intelligence.

It's about time that another Scream flick came along to gouge the new cliches out of their sockets. Scream 4 does it in grandly Guignol style.

Your Highness is drive-by directing at its laziest, linking late-night sketch ideas in a quest for comedy as difficult to locate as the Holy Grail.

The standout in Win Win is Alex Shaffer, a former New Jersey state champion cast as Kyle.

The sermons are subtle, raising the film's chances of crossing over to secular audiences. Soul Surfer is so clean that it squeaks, but sometimes that's a nice change of pace.

Brand is amusing, in a nutty "Get Him to the Greek" sort of way, while Moore delivered one of the funniest performances ever.

A fitfully entertaining movie in an awkward position; too arty for the action crowd yet too unsubtle for more refined tastes.

Hop is harmless, which is the worst best thing to be said for any movie. It never decides whether to be a kiddie flick or a grownup lark and winds up as neither. As Roger might say: "Puh-puh-puh-puhleeze, don't waste your time."

A tidy terror flick, and refreshing with its intention to make viewers gasp rather than gag.

White-knuckle fun.

It's all megalomaniacal junk from Snyder, but that isn't his most offensive move.

Nothing to skip school over but at least it's not in 3-D. No sense in paying an extra ticket charge for something belonging on TV, anyway.

The next step in Matthew McConaughey's inevitable march to network television is The Lincoln Lawyer, a pilot disguised as a feature-length movie, with an entire season's arc crammed into two hours.

For two hours it's a fun head trip.

What nags me about Battle Los Angeles is that Liebesman never realizes what he set up to happen after the fade-out.

This movie embraces its inner yokel.

A timid new take on the old fairy tale, and it's pretty grim.

Rango is wild, woolly and weird, and the first movie of 2011 that I must see again.

This is a solid, sincere affirmation of faith and forgiveness. Praise the Lord, and pass the popcorn.

Unknown is finely tuned pulp filmmaking, a dumb movie with a smart veneer, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Giamatti is a superb expressionist of emotional flotsam, with a Golden Globe for his effort.