Biutiful has a strong, linear narrative drive. Nevertheless, and most of all, it's a gorgeous, melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt.

Acutely observed but gloomy and lacking narrative, it tells of 12 months in the life of a decent but dull suburban couple and their friends, most of whom you would go out of your way to avoid at a party.

Feste, who has one previous effort as a writer-director, last year's "The Greatest," fails here to do the most basic thing -- give an audience a rooting interest, or any interest at all, in these four troubled people.

While not the worst in recent 3D films, Gulliver's Travels is more gimmicky than a crackling good yarn.

Ultimately, the heavy-handed and annoyingly obvious aesthetic wears thin.

Clearly nothing but a paycheck project for all concerned, this is definitely the least and hopefully the last of a franchise that started amusingly enough a decade ago but has now officially overstayed its welcome.

Megamind is snappy good fun.

A low-impact romantic comedy-drama from James L. Brooks in which the central characters are strangely disconnected from one another as well as from the audience.

Todd Phillips' follow-up to the most successful R-rated comedy of all time serves up its share of laughs while not actually providing a terribly enjoyable time because of a queasy undercurrent that never goes away.

Despite some interesting ideas, Cool It's conventional camerawork and unexceptional editing don't contribute much additional value to a package that's unlikely to alter Lomborg's outsider status.

The best blue collar action movie in who knows how long, this tense, narrowly focused thriller about a runaway freight train has a lean and pure simplicity to it that is satisfying in and of itself.

This seventh installment does at least provide a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the series in the unlikely event they choose to give it a rest.

Denis creates the threat of imminent danger through stillness and austerity rather than action. She's helped immeasurably by an astringent, fully committed performance from her leading lady, a gaunt, impossibly resolute Isabelle Huppert.

In the end, this is a smart movie that could have been smarter. The script feels like it was a draft or so away from total clarity and focus. But the energy of the cast and a dive into an unfamiliar world make the movie rather addictive.

Stripped for action without a moment wasted on unnecessary dialogue, exposition or nuances.

Yogi is still smarter than the average bear, but Yogi Bear is much less smart than most of the year's kid-friendly cartoons.

There's insufficient suspense in the life-or-death stakes, sketchy plot detail in the gang clash that triggers the action and too little ambiguity in the intercharacter dynamics.

How she (Dunham) made her movie is more impressive or at least unique than the actual story she chooses to tell.

The widely heralded musical auteur deserves a more insightful documentary treatment than the one afforded in Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.

After her foray into historical costumers with "Marie Antoinette," Sofia Coppola makes a happy return to "Lost in Translation" territory in the cutback charmer Somewhere, which illuminates the emptiness of a movie star's life in Los Angeles through close observation and gentle irony.

An aimlessly wandering DIY-indie that will send viewers retreating to popcorn movies at their local multiplex.

A fiendishly entertaining Christmas yarn rooted in Northern European legend and lore, complete with a not-so-jolly old St. Nick informed more by the Brothers Grimm than Norman Rockwell.

It perhaps started with "The Queen," continued with "Young Victoria" and now achieves the most intimate glimpse inside the royal camp to date with The King's Speech.

Not a particularly deep portrait of its iconoclastic subject, this loving documentary should be of interest to aging baby boomers with long memories.

A passably entertaining hodgepodge of old and new animation techniques, mixed sensibilities and hedged commercial calculations.

Women will love this, and men won't mind the eye candy either, so it looks like this Screen Gems release can't help becoming a hit.

Staggeringly misjudged in virtually every department, from the wannabe effervescent script to Johnny Depp's dopey hairdo.

More than even the most faithful of the earlier episodes, this film feels devoted above all to reproducing the novel onscreen as closely as possible, an impulse that drags it toward ponderousness at times and rather sorely tests the abilities of the young actors to hold the screen entirely on their own, without being propped up by the ever-fabulous array of character actors the series offers.

Dead Awake, now receiving a limited theatrical release, is the sort of B-movie effort that so screams "direct to video" that it's a wonder they don't hand you DVDs as you enter the theater.

The film starts out as a gentle Hollywood satire, shifts abruptly into a comedy of (bad) manners, turns into a crime story and deviates into a suicide attempt before it reverts to a Hollywood satire with a happy ending. No Hollywood satire should ever have a happy ending.

The film does achieve moments of catharsis, but it can be heavy going.

Far less daring than her 1999 "Titus," which took an electrifying, stylized approach of a lesser-known play, The Tempest in comparison looks disappointingly middle-of-the-road.

So like much of this film, the viewer is turned into an observer. You never feel close enough to the action, either in the ring or in the kitchens, living rooms and tough streets where the story takes place. The characters engage you up to a point but never really pull you in.

The simple but affecting film begins a weeklong award-qualifying run Friday before opening in stateside art houses Jan. 21, and is worth a look for its gutsy and commanding central performance.

One ticket buys you cowboys, samurais, gangsters, ninjas, spaghetti Westerns, Hong Kong martial artists, knife throwers and even Fellini-esque circus performers. But like kimchi pasta, some things aren't meant to mix.

Despite some choppy transitions and a few melodramatic moments that don't work, the film casts an effective, deepening chill.

It all ends up being a half-hour too much of a just okay thing.

After slipping badly with the second installment two years ago, the Narnia franchise does a full-on belly flop with this third.

Well-made and acted Coen Brothers remake lacks the humor and resonance that might have made it memorable.

Indeed, White Swan/Black Swan dynamics almost work, but the horror-movie nonsense drags everything down the rabbit hole of preposterousness.

Remains mostly fascinating even in an amateur storyteller's hands.

Filmmaker Javier Fuentes-Leon's delicately and sensuously illuminates this collision of contemporary sexuality with centuries of dogma and tradition. At times, he interjects magical realist elements into the story, which makes it confusing rather than lifting it to a higher plane of understanding.

Not hurting matters for foreign and Indian film devotees, the film features two icons of Indian cinema, Madhur Jaffrey and Naseeruddin Shah.

Contains enough fascinating archival footage to make it worthy of interest.

The real-life tale of a group of female machinists who took on the Ford Motor Co. in England and earned equal pay for women gets a rousing and entertaining telling in Nigel Cole's crowd-pleasing Made in Dagenham.

Although involving, this remake of a recent French film never reaches the anticipated heights of excitement and suspense.

Beyond the dazzling "first contact" sequences seen in the trailers, Skyline is a spasmodic and incoherent shambles hampered by an astoundingly stupid screenplay.

It merely recycles 1987's "Broadcast News" with only a single reference to YouTube.

In retelling the still-astonishing story of the political career of Eliot Spitzer, a shooting star whose spectacular crash might forever obscure his accomplishments, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney has all the ingredients for a potboiler: greed, corruption, sex, power, overweening ambition and jaw-dropping hubris.

Liman outfits the film with spy-thriller packaging worthy of his "The Bourne Identity," so the film probably will attract above-average coin and possibly awards attention.

A hilarious farce and a brilliant takedown of the imbecility of fanaticism.

(Perry) style is too crude and stagy for Shange's transformative evocation of black female life, and his moralizing strikes exactly the wrong notes to express the pain and longing that cries out from her heated poetry.

This tedious exercise in abstraction by Belgian filmmakers Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani well apes the visual stylization of such filmmakers as Mario Bava and Dario Argento without bothering to provide anything equivalent in terms of theme or content.

They don't make movies like Jolene anymore, and that's a good thing.

How much of this you'll find enlightening and how much simply creepy will depend on your tolerance for cinematic navel-gazing.

All of the key creative personnel contribute to the movie's nail-biting tension and unexpectedly moving finale. Jon Harris's editing is matchless, and Rahman's score effectively heightens the emotion. Ultimately, however, it is the talents of Boyle and Franco that sock this movie home.

Extremely crude in its technical elements, the low-budget film does reveal stylistic ambitions through devices like frequently reverting from color to black-and-white film stock. But the shaky narrative style and broad characterizations undo its effectiveness.

Whatever sociological interest it engenders is smothered by its hamfisted execution, including stubbornly lugubrious pacing, overly self-conscious performances and awkward dialogue and voice-over narration that all too bluntly lays out its themes.

Jonathan Lynn's lamentable black comedy Wild Target again shows that attractive and charismatic actors can do nothing to save a movie that's charmless, pointless and witless.

The movie never overcomes the triteness of its premise.

Overall, though, the project brings enough good into this rough corner of the world that viewers can walk out with honest cause to be hopeful for its inhabitants.

Although the tentative performances of his two human leads proves less satisfying, and the story's not-so-underlying sociological context can be hard to miss -- it takes place along the U.S.-Mexico border -- the overall picture still impresses.

The movie features a great finish, where three movies' worth of subplots and characters dovetail into a breathtaking climax and final confrontation that is positively soul satisfying.

Anyone who has seen the original knows exactly where things are heading, with the result that the proceedings seem far more manipulative than unnerving.

Although its sendup of L.A.'s shallow, self-absorbed show business culture is not exactly revelatory, the film does deliver solid laughs, many of them thanks to Philips' wittily provocative, surprisingly hostile confessional ditties.

This lame comedy about a big doofus who enters the fight game manages to take every cliche in the book and render them even more cliched.

The film captures the energy, the stresses and the tension of people striking punching bags and each other but without narration, it all feels a bit random and uninteresting.

The final act hits like a gut-punch. Worst fears are confirmed, and the protagonist faces a moral dilemma no father should have to confront. Kormakur and his writers give their protagonist no easy way out.

The film is in the tradition of fighting-the-system stories drawn from real life such as "Erin Brokovich," and its powerful emotional appeal should draw a substantial grownup audience.

The film never is less than intriguing, right from its tour de force opening sequence, and often full of insights into why people long for answers, sometimes with great urgency.

Jaunty and entertaining.

There is not a credible moment in this overly calculated melodrama.

Very much a lesson, and a repetitive and uneven one at that, GhettoPhysics succeeds at least as a conversation starter.

This superbly acted drama’s refusal to serve up tidy epiphanies might leave you wanting more. But the inchoate nature of the central characters’ self-reflection is partly the point in a smart movie with a lot on its mind.

Those who might be able to put aside despair and absorb this strictly as a work of persuasive rhetoric will be impressed with its intellectual scope, the economy of the storytelling in its fictional narrative, the bravura editing and visual panache as it builds a world full of dust, detritus and debased morals.

One of his most piercing inquiries yet. ... Herzog is the clear-eyed student — at times amazed and delighted, and, at others, skeptical and alarmed. Amid the cryostats and nanoparticles and fiber optics, the clunky gadgets and impenetrable-to-the-layperson diagrams, he summons a wry and lyrical mix of awe and foreboding.

I feel tempted to say there’s a leaner, stronger film inside this that could have been coaxed out, but in the light of the film’s message about accepting people as they are, maybe we shouldn’t be shaming this film either. It is what it is, and that’s perfectly imperfect.

Although Vallee's remarkably assured film, which clocks in at more than two hours, proves that it's possible to have too much of a good thing, Canada's official Oscar submission for best foreign-language feature still manages keep up the entertaining yet emotionally satisfying pace sufficiently to earn audience accolades.

A case study in how storytelling contrivances can sabotage a courageously vulnerable performance, the movie addresses American parents’ deepest fears but is just one or two steps away from inviting ritualized communal mockery, à la The Room, at midnight screenings.

More than ever, Trier reveals how well he can keep shifting tones and emotional arcs without losing any narrative momentum.

This shaky apocalyptic film doesn’t land at times, but its gripping final act, a handful of standout performances and attempts at commentary about class and climate change will probably keep most audiences engaged.

In terms of sustaining a narrative using only FaceTime, Skype, Facebook, video downloads and various other web pages and social media platforms, Profile is quite impressive up to a point. In terms of coherent plotting and plausibility, not so much. That means that as the storytelling falls apart, the online framework devolves into a labored tech gimmick, and a visually tiresome one at that.

Raiff is so credible in the part one can't help but suspect there's a lot of him in Alex; the film's willingness to look so frankly at his vulnerability, in an unmanipulative way, feels especially refreshing now.

It's telling that the film's original Danish title, which translates to "Suicide Tourist," has been changed for its U.S. release. Exit Plan sounds much more dynamic, indicating the sort of action thriller that the star's fans probably expect. They're likely to be quite disappointed by this stylish, cerebral drama that doesn't really have anything profound to say.

This atmospheric, expertly crafted little New England noir has droll dialogue, a female empowerment theme and a sly use of crime elements.

It’s an eyebrow-raising true tale, one aided and abetted onscreen by the solid cast and strong sense of commitment. But Heckler is caught somewhere between being a journalistic historian and a dramatist without seeming expert at either. His screenplay connects all the dots of the story with no sense of shaping or modulation.

What we are thus left with is a film that's made with an impressive level of craftsmanship but with exceptionally dubious politics, as if 21st-century moviemaking magic had been let loose on a terribly conservative and hopelessly blinkered 1980s relic of a script.

This vigorous, colorful and clever melodrama smartly rethinks both the play and the character, making her a far more proactive figure than Shakespeare did in addition to entirely reimagining her fate.

Kim’s Areum is edgy, multi-layered and far from docile.

Mary Magdalene is an uneasy viewing experience, ponderous and disjointed in places, but also crafted with conviction and a strong aesthetic vision.

In the end, sensationalism and simplistic emotions, bolstered by Klaus Badelt's sweeping score, decimate a story that has otherwise been unfolding nicely with gloom and intrigue.

There is no denying that, initially, Transit’s story might feel excessively oblique. But as the film slowly puts its formalistic and thematic cards on the table, it becomes clear that its storytelling technique is really just a reflection of its core themes.

Like a crafty predator, the Danish knock-out Holiday lays patiently in wait as long as it needs to — in this case nearly an hour — before stunning its prey, the spectator, with a shocking scene that catapults the film to a whole different level.

Stars Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska go a long way toward keeping this tricky pic balanced, though Pesce's knowing use of sleazy-Seventies vibe (following the distinctive b&w spareness of The Eyes of My Mother, his only previous feature) creates the perfect world for them to do it in.

The tense triangle among the girl and her two moms unfolds against an interesting backdrop: a stark setting in rural Sardinia, where tall cliffs and dirt roads criss-cross a shrub-infested desert. Its general wildness is underlined in the first scene at a local bronco-busting rodeo.

Minor-key and subdued to a fault, the drama nonetheless builds emotional involvement by infinitesimal degrees through its acute observation of characters and social context and its ultra-naturalistic performances.

Though not every moment is fascinating to watch, most moments are, and adult audiences should find its frank presentation of the diversity of intimacy thought-provoking and possibly therapeutic.

A degree of tolerance for these frequent outbursts of unrestrained, puerile humor eventually reveals a tender portrait of a neglected woman seeking solace in her vivid, perhaps deranged, imagination