Terse and understated, this is a spy vs. spy tale designed to minimize talk and maximize action, not at all a bad thing in movies but over-worked to near-exhaustion here.

Such heart-tuggers have their appeal to some people in any era, but earnest hokum of this nature has become increasingly rare. And for a reason.

A convincingly tender drama thanks to the presence of star Greta Gerwig.

Most disappointingly, the dancers never get their close-ups; whether by choice or by some enforced arrangement, Wiseman doesn't approach the gorgeous women to give them the chance to tell their side of what it's like to work at the Crazy Horse.

By this time, cinematographer Fred Kelemen's mostly stationary camera has revealed about all there is to see in a fine array of textures in such things as the wooden table, the rough floors, the walls of stone, the ropes on the horse and the skin on the boiled potatoes. That does not, however, make up for the almost complete lack of information about the two characters, and so it is easy to become indifferent to their fate, whatever it is.

It's a pleasure to surrender to the movie's lush visuals, which are accompanied by wonderful jazz classics performed by Valdes, Estrella Morente, and Freddy Cole (Nat King Cole's brother), among many others.

"No Country for Young Kids" would be just as suitable a title for The Woman in Black, a hoot of an old-fashioned British horror film.

It's the affable cast, headed by Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski, that really makes the picture so widely accessible.

As the band of adventurers skips from one supersized Survivor-like challenge to the next, one can't help feeling the creative potential of Verne's vision is wasted.

Perfect Sense is dense: It's a very complex and intelligent story hybrid that, must have looked great on paper and sounded impressive in discussion, but as a movie, it splatters all over the screen in unsatisfying genetic mutations.

The result is a largely entertaining picture with too few (and late-arriving) scares to satisfy the multiplex crowd, but one that will please many die-hard genre aficionados.

Director-screenwriter Ben Wheatley brings a fresh mystery and bite to the hitman genre, although a deeply weird twist and buckets of gore may throw more than a few audience members.

Rodrigo Garcia's film only intermittently surmounts the limitations of the central character's parched emotional existence and restricted horizons, and the resolutions to some principal dramatic lines seem rather too easy.

Starring a painfully awkward Katherine Heigl, One for the Money mostly resembles a failed television pilot.

The good news is that it will be a good 15 years before we're forced to encounter the character again in Spring. Maybe by then he'll be less of a downer.

It's something you'd think only the crassest of Hollywood producers would come up with - injecting sex appeal into an event as ghastly at the Nanjing massacre - but it's an element central to The Flowers of War, a contrived and unpersuasive look at an oft-dramatized historical moment.

To his credit, director Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cite Soleil) gets right to the business at hand where the set-up is concerned, but it's in the execution that this would-be thriller falls flat.

More aggressively violent and thankfully less mythology driven than previous installments, Underworld: Awakening is strictly for the converted.

Every character here is so squeaky-clean, and the prejudice as depicted is so toothless and easily overcome, that the film feels like a gingerly fantasy version of what, in real life, was an exceptional example of resilient trail-blazing.

The Grey, a man's-man of a genre picture that will satisfy the action audience while reminding more discerning viewers what they saw in director Joe Carnahan's decade-old breakthrough, "Narc."

Despite dynamic subject matter, prime archive material and insightful interviewees, Whitney Sudler-Smith's intrusive presence onscreen somewhat trivializes his documentary tribute to Halston and the decadent disco years.

Dori Berinstein's tender but sharp portrait finds a lot of depths in the woman whom many see as a camp figure.

A grindhouse quality that makes Loosies almost fun in flashes. But flashes are all they are -- pleasures even more fleeting than an off-brand smoke bummed from strangers in an alley.

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's final film about the West Memphis Three demonstrates how the first two docs played a role in galvanizing national support to free the wrongly convicted men.

The lead role of a working class former smuggler who dirties his hands again to save his family fits Mark Wahlberg like a glove.

Relentlessly unpleasant and nihilistic in its approach and execution, The Divide is best appreciated as a virtual instruction manual on how not to behave during a crisis.

A teens-in-trouble thriller with barely enough momentum to make it to the end credits. Performances and script are made-for-cable grade.

Staggeringly cornball and squeaky-clean even when flirting with such issues as interracial sexual rivalries.

Never gets off the ground, trotting out the same predictable twisting heads and psycho-babble without a whiff of originality or discernible visual flair. As a result, the would-be thriller proves as scary and unsettling as a slab of devil's food cake - only considerably less satisfying.

As in all the director's work, the cast is given top consideration and their realistic acting results in unusual depth of characterization.

A hilarious date movie for couples of all orientations.

The fact that Norwegian Wood is based on Haruki Murakami's 1987 international best-seller should encourage many viewers to give this long, elegantly shot, sporadically involving Japanese film a try.

Shah Rukh Khan's foray into bad-boy territory is all swagger with not much substance.

For those willing to take the plunge, it is a deep and haunting work that lingers in the memory.

First-timer Dee Rees offers a fresh take on the overfamiliar coming-out genre.

An alien invasion flick that evidently expects dramatic shots of a depopulated Red Square to make up for a flatlining screenplay and the absence of even a single compelling character.

Artist evinces unlimited love for the look and ethos of the 1920s as well for the style of the movies. The filmmakers clearly did their homework and took great pleasure in doing so, an enjoyment that is passed along in ample doses to any viewer game for their nifty little conceit.

Wim Wenders' stylish 3D mirrors the bizarrely captivating world of choreographer Pina Bausch.

Best of all, von Sydow is absolutely wonderful, with the great veteran actor clearly relishing this very unusual role as he darts, skulks and, in a stealthy way, mugs across town. Without saying a thing, he dominates the middle part of the movie.

Jolie deserves significant credit for creating such a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly, even if it is these very strengths that will make people not want to watch what's onscreen.

Whatever its missteps, this is a film that kids, middle-aged adults and grandparents can all see -- together or separately -- and get something out of in their own ways. There are precious few films that fit this description today and hats off to Spielberg for making one.

Every bit as frantic, frenetic, groan-inducing and all around grating as its two predecessors.

Its raw performances and dirty-realist immersion in a harsh environment keep Cook County engrossing.

Dragon Tattoo is too neatly wrapped up, too fastidious to get under your skin and stay there.

Cast and crew's investment in the story's tragedy and its ensuing moral debates is evident in every frame, but the film isn't fully successful in generating the same depth of feeling in viewers.

Hill shows less snark and agitation than usual here, and the restraint serves him well.

The storyline is hardly original, but it does provide the opportunity for Rebeck to unleash wickedly scathing observations about the sort of self-obsessed show business types who pursue their own interests no matter who it hurts.

After quite a few tedious detours and distractions, when the film finally gets down to the business of a climax at a gathering of elite European diplomats in a precariously perched Swiss mountain castle, it becomes not half-bad.

The impact of spectacular action on striking international locales is moderated somewhat by the repetitive nature of the challenges faced by this rebooted team of American agents.

The result proves to be as appealing and effervescent as a flute of flat champagne.

A compelling and disturbing drama about some elemental male issues.

Their scenes together are the film's best, with Theron and Oswalt, who have very different tempi and temperatures as performers, parrying and thrusting with great expertise.

Crazy Wisdom offers a perceptive, if one-sided, perspective on Trungpa's impact on American spirituality and the arts.

Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in Coriolanus as William Shakespeare's Rambo in a production that delivers heavyweight screen acting at its best.

It is one of the few films so visually absorbing, felicitous shot after shot, that its emotional coldness is noticed only at the end, when all the plot twists are unraveled in a solid piece of thinking-man's entertainment for upmarket thriller audiences.

This story of suffering and almost inadvertent humanitarianism is harrowing, engrossing, claustrophobic and sometimes literally hard to watch.

As easy on the eyes and ears as it is embalmed from any dramatic point of view.

This is, in a way, a real horror film about everyday things and a disconnected family.

A gloomy but perhaps realistic depiction of the forces of corruption and deceit that produce environmental catastrophes.

As violent, amoral and misanthropic as a Jacobean play, Outrage is Takeshi Kitano's first yakuza flick since "Brother" (2000), and arguably his best film in a decade.

Besson responded to something in the story that prompted him to step outside his comfort zone, but exactly what that was is unclear in this well-intentioned but pedestrian retelling of a stirring true story.

Arguably the director's least typical film, it doesn't dodge the potholes of earnest sentimentality and at times overplays the whimsy. But the uplifting tale has heart, humanity and a warmly empathetic central performance from Matt Damon.

Meryl Streep gives a fully realized portrait of British Prime Minister Thatcher in a biopic that values character over context.

Palmer keeps his focus tightly on the families, which makes the movie admirably unpretentious but also incomplete. Nevertheless, the picture has a vibrant central character in James McDonagh, the leading fighter in the clan who begins to question the rites of violence.

A true-life tale of espionage so brazen and crucial to World War II's outcome one marvels that it isn't better known; but the documentary would likely work better as a feature film.

A breezy, keen-to-please attitudes prevails, and director James Bobin (The Flight of the Conchords, Da Ali G Show for TV) moves things along with good cheer.

Neither its depiction of the world of squares nor its embrace of rule-flouting self-affirmation rings true, so the inevitable happy ending offers little joy.

A fabulous and passionate love letter to the cinema and its preservation framed by the strenuous adventures of two orphans in 1930s Paris.

Silver Tongues isn't a film that ever tries to be especially palatable. Its cynicism is of an unusually bitter, even nihilistic flavor, in the vein of early Neil Labute. This leaves an intriguing, memorable but naggingly unpleasant aftertaste.

Although the film recounts an intriguing slice of social history, it is too haphazard and repetitive to be truly memorable.

Likeably shaggy, it has arthouse appeal and a winning cast.

A must for those with an interest in modern design.

Even with the addition of new characters, such as the ones voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, George Miller's animated sequel just isn't very funny.

Harrelson goes full bore from the opening scene and there are no scenes he is not in. But the effect is wearying rather than exhilarating.

In the end, given how little goes on in Breaking Dawn - Part 1 despite the major plot points, what you're left with is to gaze at the three leads, all of whom have their constituencies and reasons for being eminently watchable. The only hope is they'll have more to do next time around.

The portrait is dispiriting overall, inspiring little affection from viewers, but feels authentic and fair.

After multiple "Saw" franchise releases, writer-director Darren Lynn Bousman goes it alone for 11-11-11, with at best tepid results elaborating an unconvincing premise.

An informative if uninvigorating look at the violinist Itzhak Perlman calls "the first true modern virtuoso player," Peter Rosen's God's Fiddler: Jascha Heifetz will draw only the most ardent classical fans to its niche theatrical run but should please a wider audience after making its way to educational TV.

While the documentary stops short of hagiography, it offers a delicate portrait of a man with an extraordinarily youthful energy and enthusiasm for music, people and life.

Leave it to the folks who brought us "Wallace & Gromit," "Chicken Run" and "Flushed Away" to bring a delightful blast of fresh air to the conventional Christmas genre. Aardman's Arthur Christmas is that and more - an endlessly amusing 3D, CG-animated Yuletide romp with lively innovation at every turn and a dream voice cast headed by James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie and Bill Nighy.

Immortals is not only entirely without humor, but is dominated by a lot of huffing and puffing, thunderous self-importance and windy Socratic quotations about the immortality and divinity of men's souls. You just have to roll your eyes after a while.

Jack and Jill is witless and sloppily constructed, getting by on fart gags, homeless jokes, Latino stereotypes and that old favorite, explosive chimichanga diarrhea -- and no, not in an inspired "Bridesmaids" way.

The cast is fine, but the roles are superficial and too concentrated on the film's theme.

This is clearly not a film made for everyone, but for a fortunate few, it will feel like a cleansing in nature.

The film, both in scope and tone, has a downsized vibe that would have made it a much better fit on an ABC Family than in a movie theater.

A thoughtful piece of advocacy journalism.

Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, Shame is a real walk on the wild side, a scorching look at a case of sexual addiction that's as all-encompassing as a craving for drugs.

The script makes no attempt to assert its plausibility or realism; it is, instead, refreshingly frank about what it is, a simple, workable framework for the melees and mayhem.

It satisfies not only in the tradition of yarns boiled hard and wry, but as a savvy comment on fame and ambition.

An amusing yet lightweight political farce.

But above all it's a portrait of stunned grief, of the devastation families endure, whether through violence, accidents, illness or incarceration.

This surprising collaboration between director Clint Eastwood and "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black tackles its trickiest challenges with plausibility and good sense, while serving up a simmeringly caustic view of its controversial subject's behavior, public and private.

A mildly diverting naughty comedy, lacking the pure comic nastiness of "Bad Santa" or the sheer audacity of "Up in Smoke."

Stölzl's film falls gently between the stools of high-brow camp and genuine seduction by its many period charms, fine actors and lovely landscapes.

Gigandet, whose star has been rising thanks to his roles in such films as "Twilight," "Burlesque" and "Easy A," delivers a sensitive portrayal that proves he's more than just a hunk. Malone is as appealing as always, and Hartman is wonderfully fun as the Buster Poindexter-like singer. But the script lacks the depth to transcend its cutesy gimmick.

This cleverly conceived, behind-the-scenes tale features fine lead performances and enough nods to the epic group's early days to interest fans outside the U.K.

Dennis Farina gets the enviable opportunity to humanize the kind of character he has sometimes exaggerated comically in glossier films.

Performances are strong across the board, and the movie offers a solid sense of place. But the mysteries, once explained, don't make a lot of sense.