The co-screenwriter of "Kissing Jessica Stein" goes solo as writer and director with a romantic comedy that takes time to find its groove but steadily accumulates heart and humor.

A creaky haunted house that, once the big twist is revealed, makes very little sense at all.

Despite a couple of unconvincingly upbeat tacked-on moments at the end, Project X basically reads as nihilistic, as not believing in or standing for anything. Not even fun.

Armed with a splendid voice cast and a gorgeously-rendered 3D-CG landscape, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax entertains while delivering it's pro-environmental, anti-greed message wrapped in a bright package of primary colors that truly pop.

In The Salt of Life, the actor-writer-director again plays his own alter ego, and gives us another deceptively small, vaguely autobiographical story with universal resonance, in more technically assured packaging.

Robert De Niro and writer-director Paul Weitz find the most congenial material either of them has had in quite some time in Being Flynn.

Paula van der Oest's biopic of South African poet Ingrid Jonker is conventional yet captivating thanks in large part to a terrific lead performance from Carice van Houten.

Only the truly ghoulish will find any pleasure in Snowtown, Justin Kurzel's well-crafted but hard-to-watch true-crime debut.

Audiences attuned to Tim & Eric's weird wavelength will find plenty of guffaws in the first half, but a plot this thin can't sustain comedy based on discomfort; the film is so much of a good thing one starts to wonder if the thing is good in the first place.

A thriller so fixated on red herrings that viewers may stop caring if anyone's really in danger, Gone is diverting but unlikely to linger long in theaters.

This soapy effort about a prosperous businessman having a midlife crisis finds Perry working in the heavily melodramatic mode that marks his weakest efforts.

Although the film has its undeniably immersive, convincing moments, the merging of dramatic re-creations and on-camera "performances" proves less seamlessly executed than those masterfully coordinated land, sea and air missions.

Stars Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston find themselves at home here, playing against a stock-raising performance by Justin Theroux as the charismatic libertine who prompts their adventure.

Australia may finally have a homegrown blockbuster on its hands with the terrifically engaging Tomorrow, When the War Began, an action-packed war film for and about teenagers.

A water-treading sequel offering just enough kooky color to keep less-discerning funnybook fans occupied, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance nudges its obscure hero's mythology forward a bit without seeming to care much how it gets there.

The filmmaker made the film on his family's tobacco farm so perhaps his own memories may filter through those of his fictional characters. Or maybe they're not fictional at all. Jess + Moss is, to put it mildly, open to interpretation.

Tanovic wisely returns to his Bosnia and Herzegovina roots, where the small but highly nuanced story, set in prewar 1991, rings with authenticity and weight.

This amusing Danish doc aimed at TV audiences portrays Masha as an ambitious, intelligent, right-wing young lady who comes fatefully into contact with a bunch of left-wing journalists and loses her bearings. The overall effect is tragi-comic, even considering the dark events that bring the film to an unexpected dramatic climax.

It's impossible not to root for these guys, or to leave Undefeated without feeling enormously moved by the experience of their joys and disappointments.

The actor literally takes the metaphors of his bull-headed character to the limits and is never less than believable or mesmerizing.

Danfung Dennis presents a powerful depiction of the horrors and daily violence of our ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Does right by both fans and subjects.

Martyn Burke's documentary hauntingly dissects the rise of media mortality in the war zone and the mental disorders that follow.

A clever twist on superpowers and hand-held filmmaking that stumbles before the ending.

Presumably intended as an inspiring portrait of a private individual daring to live his dream of traveling in space, Man on a Mission instead comes across as a cautionary tale about having too much time and money on your hands.

This perfectly dreadful romantic action comedy manages to embarrass its three eminently attractive leading players in every scene, making this an automatic candidate for whatever raspberries or golden turkeys or other dubious awards may be given in future for the films of 2012.

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.