Levinson is interested in humanity, in the small moments that make us who we are, and it's these moments that make The Bay so chilling.

Described as an "existential horror film," The Details can't quite reach the same level of excellence as The Coen Brothers' recent "A Serious Man," another film about a man being punished (or rewarded) by fate based on his actions.

It's hard to tell who is to blame for the movie's abrasive anonymousness – Curtis or Apted – but it hardly matters. In either directors' hands, Chasing Mavericks would have been a wipe-out. It's totally bogus.

Uninventive and unimaginative.

Aiming for a trifecta of small kids, their older sisters and parents in the audience, Fun Size fails them all in a movie that is neither a trick nor a treat.

Yes, the idea is unique. But they aren't quite ready to shake off what has worked for them for years -- namely making girls want to be special and popular, and boys strong and heroic.

One step worse than most of these video game movies. It feels less like a game and more like what happens when you leave your PlayStation on and it becomes a kind of dim screensaver. If we had a controller in our hand, we would probably throw it at the screen.

Bernal continues to put in one good performance after another, and his turn here is no exception.

Two things make The Sessions stand out. One is the level of acting...The other is that, while we all know sex is more than boobs and bits and butts, it also does include those things, and The Sessions does not hide behind euphemism or gentle cutaways, montages or misty light.

Paranormal Activity 4 is listless, dreadful and boring, an almost painfully inert and superficial ghost story that lacks specificity or scares. Time to turn the camera off, guys.

It won't linger in the mind longer than it takes for the credits to roll, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts, and we're genuinely looking forward to part 2 at this point.

Holy Motors keeps kicking into a different gear, much like an eternally waking dream.

Alex Cross is more boring than your average weeknight procedural, except much longer, dumber and more violent.

It subtly makes the connection between the simple equation that investment in our children will give dividends that go far beyond any sort of number on a balance sheet.

An engaging and initially very promising drama about alcoholism, redemption and forgiveness that grows uneven and long-winded as it progresses.

It's an audaciously broad topic, and at less than eighty minutes, you wonder what exactly Split gives us that we haven't received from countless other political documentaries.

Whether or not you've steeped in film noir lore, Hotel Noir still plays like an enjoyable little thriller.

The Thieves is less interested in the characters than it is the elaborate stunts and gimmicks.

Best of all is the bad guy. Javier Bardem was always a tantalizing choice to play a Bond villain, and his Silva is a terrific creation, and certainly the most memorable villain in the series in decades.

Full of humor and humanity, Nobody Walks is an emotionally complex, acutely observed and sensual film.

Gayby isn't groundbreaking, but it's a fun romp whose characters grow on you after spending some time with them.

It's worth saying that the final moments of Smiley are a grade above the by-the-numbers film that unfolded prior, but it's too little too late.

With just a little bit more prodding and elaboration, the movie could have been rich and evocative. Even if you don't believe what he preaches, the movie (at least) could have bordered on a transcendent experience. As it stands, it's pretty good, but not exactly heavenly.

Unfortunately, there are few screens small enough to properly convey how inessential another deadpan suburbs satire is in 2012.

With both Garner and Shahedi providing voice-over, the small-town stakes and the big thematic ideas, Butter feels like someone trying to create the lemonade tang and quenching zest of, say, Alexander Payne's "Election."

It's not a surprise that he most resembles an older Charles Bronson in Taken 2, as both found the enthusiasm to soldier on in the action genre well into their old age. Bronson had a bit more patience with these films: after this, it's doubtful Neeson will.

Ultimately, while 'Escape Fire' proposes numerous options for changing the system-- getting Medicare to cover healthy lifestyle counseling programs, incentivizing doctors to spend time with patients, and patients to empower their own health-- the one that is most poignant is that people should spend the time to take care of each other.

We strongly insist that any pain you experience while watching this movie will never be useful, anytime or anyplace.

Special notice should be given to Billy Campbell, who takes a stock character and gives him a new spin.

While it's messily put together, with a sprawling and at times unfocused narrative that often gets in the way of itself, it doesn't deny the power of the facts Jarecki brings to bear on a misguided program that hasn't stopped the demand for drugs, that has disenfranchised the poor and minorities, and created an expensive prison industry.

Wuthering Heights is a model of how to bring a classic novel kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

Sister is as bleak and as beautiful as its snowy, mountainous setting.

Ponsoldt, Paul and Winstead make a remarkably effective team for this film's points and purposes, and Smashed burns long after it goes down smoothly.

A lurid, florid, humid, flaccid and insipid waste of time and money for the audience and for everyone who made it.

V/H/S delivers the thrills and chills craftily and with a better batting average than usual.

It's easy to take most films' war-torn elsewheres for granted, and taken on its own merits, Red Dawn is a victory of small battles and heavy artillery, sentimental but rarely too hackneyed, energetic without becoming too silly.

Deeply resonant and soulful, Life Of Pi, is a harrowing journey of survival, self-discovery and connection that both inspires and awes in equal measure.

The script finishes up exactly where you think it will, but along the way, there are enough surprises and perfectly delivered lines to make it a blast.

Moving, rousing, funny and at times even haunting.

It's not everyone cup of bloody tea, but an unapologetic genre treat for those willing to dive in.

Hotel Transylvania is very different from its contemporaries. You just wish that, with so much emphasis on chaos, they could have spent a little more time on character.

17 Girls is mostly fueled by grrl-power, from it's nineties-era femme-centric alt-rock, to it's marginalization of boys as sperm-deposit devices, unfair but a natural corrective to years of women onscreen as purely sexual objects.

It's a deeply humane and moving look at a complex issue that at the very least demands that a conversation begins not about short term fixes, but long term solutions.

It says something, then, that Burton's best, most enjoyable, and most emotionally resonate film in years is actually an adaptation of one of his very first projects: Frankenweenie.

We assure you, it's not worth taking a trip to down to the House at the End of the Street. Something horrible might have happened there, but it can't be worse than this movie.

One of the best documentaries, and best films, of the year, it is required viewing for anyone with a desire for making their own world a better place, inspiring you to act up and fight back.

Hachmesiters's Three Stars is a treat, largely because it eschews the standard arc of documentaries.

I'm Carolyn Parker isn't so much a movie title, as a "Spartacus"-like shout that, if we all embraced, would make us a better people and country.

An enormously entertaining, crowd-pleasing winner from the director whose comedic edge has never been sharper.

Lacking narrative momentum, saddled with thin characterizations and uninspired plotting, Trouble With The Curve should've stayed on the bench.

It is a credit to Snowman's Land that it's plot twists are, for the most part, not entirely predictable, nor do they ever come across as far-fetched.

It's a testament to the movie's lack of creativity that Anderson can't even rip off "Aliens" and have it come across as anything less than totally boring.

Touching and brimming with the energy, enthusiasm and tides of teenage love and life, 'Perks' could very well be the next classic of the genre.

The trio (Hoffman/Keener/Walken) give top shelf performances as we've always come to expect from them in A Late Quartet. But it's just too bad that they're in service of Yaron Zilberman's film, which takes the unique focus of a string quartet in Manhattan, and puts it in the middle of a standard and unsatisfying soap opera, that spins off into one subplot too many.

Whatever Branded is selling, we aren't buying.

Somewhat spastic and overcooked, Seven Psychopaths might have a few too many.

Extraordinarily suspenseful, extremely well-told and effortless in its complex tonal balance.

Too long by at least a half hour, and both dull and repetitive as it goes on, Cloud Atlas reaches for envelope-pushing storytelling but never delivers on its promise.

Perhaps the most thrilling thing about Looper is watching Johnson really grow leaps and bounds as a filmmaker.

In other words, here's the same slop you've seen before, only with brand new accents. Also, more pooping.

With so many elements already in place there may still be a great comedy in there somewhere. With a little more finesse, Bachelorette could be the raucous female-led comedy it strives to be.

It deserves to be shown to teenagers, not necessarily as a warning, but at least as an eye-opener: This is how it works, kids. And it ain't pretty.

Both fascinatingly theatrical and thrillingly cinematic, a picture that's lingered on our minds more than we expected.

Uncompromising and uncommercial, divisive and brave, Killing Them Softly bitterly boils at the state of the nation.

Warm and funny, real and raw, Hello I Must Be Going deserves a hearty welcome from moviegoers looking for an honest and frank comedy that never forgets to help us care about its characters.

By sex line standards, For a Good Time, Call... clearly succeeds –- it starts off slow, includes plenty of dirty talk, then gives us the happy ending we came for –- but our needs are a little bit greater when it comes to good films.

Temple and Panabaker are quite good in their lead roles, to the point where you start to hate the fact that the movie's thesis thrives on the girls being damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

Silly, distracting, and undeniably entertaining.

Comes to you courtesy of WWE Films, though it's a considerable departure from their recent family-friendly approach. But it does make sense that the audience for post-apocalyptic films will start out with the Speak & Spell version of this premise, a knuckle-dragging time waster you could predict with your eyes closed. But hey. It's a movie.

Here everything feels limp – simultaneously over and undercooked. It doesn't leave much of an impression and every scare seems to be either some lame jump scare or a fright inflicted by the shrill score.

Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain both shine as the love interests for Jack and Forrest respectively, allowing those characters to have something beyond their business to be fighting for, with the skill of both performers allowing them to be more than just window dressing.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in a few months it will also be paved with unwatched DVD copies of The Tall Man.

A plodding, undercooked, and old-fashioned (not in a good way, either) chiller that will bore you to tears instead of scare you to death.

Just as the film is about to deliver it's package, it sends the viewer an I.O.U. instead, botching two-thirds of what may be Koepp's most entertaining film as a director.

Fans of Birbiglia should be easily entertained, and with a little luck, it will only earn this particular loveable neurotic a few more of those.

The Words fails to surpass dramatically the bland lack of specificity in its title while still offering a solid roundup of performances from its talented ensemble cast.

Simply put, Samsara tells the story of our world, but onscreen, it is so much more than that.

What dooms Hit and Run, which, charitably, is not as generic as it's name implies, is that the film itself comments on its own sincerity.

It's no surprise the film became a box office sensation in its native France; the characters are a delight to know and the whole movie goes down easy like a cold glass of Chardonnay on a warm summer evening.

Made with a chip on its shoulder and a generational insight that would put most Oscar bait to shame, this completely daft film deserves to be seen by anyone who remotely supports the potential of the horror genre, to frighten, to disgust and to anger.

The Matchmaker is at heart an unexpectedly complex film about love, but also an examination of Israel in flux, a country with one foot in the past and another in the future – a weight that may never fully vacate Israeli shoulders.

There are pleasures to be found in "Chicken with Plums" to be certain, but we'd hope for something a little more satisfying next time out from the directing team.

It sounds pretty dull as a logline, but stacked with gossipy, informal anecdotes and opinions from many of the most respected directors, cinematographers, editors, execs, VFX artists and digital wizards in the industry, it proves instead to be highly entertaining and informative, and by its close has presented a thoroughly diverting overview of the debate.

Even amongst its most wrenching scenes of unfettered anger and broken loyalty, a volatile sensuality nonetheless invades every frame of Paul Thomas Anderson's arresting The Master.

While the premise certainly makes it stand out from the sea of dysfunctional family dramas, a cute idea alone doesn't quite cut it. In the end it's just not funny enough to be completely entertaining and the sentiment feels tacked on.

Has more than its share of flaws, but it also gets its balance of tones right, proving spooky, involving and occasionally resonant, while still managing to bring something new to a well-worn tale, and providing a terrific lead part for one of the most promising actresses of her generation.

An outlandish fantasy that surrenders to overheated melodrama, but nonetheless titillates the eyes like a grand feast.

Everything matters in Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, but not everything is necessarily the same as DeLillo's book. And that makes the film, as a series of discussions about inter-related money-minded contradictions, insanely rich and maddeningly complex. We can't wait to rewatch it.

Honoré's made better films, and he'll make better films again; the most damning thing you can say about this one isn't that it feels like Honore doing a third-rate imitation of Francois Ozon ("Potiche," "8 Women"), but rather that it often feels like Honoré doing a third-rate imitation of himself.

It's well-acted, certainly, though these performances belong in a film with sharper pacing, one that breathes easily. But, this directorial debut from Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner breathes like a frequent smoker: in fits and starts, peppered with coughs and dry heaves.

A marvelous experience for any devoted cinephile.

As a film that even passingly acknowledges the disposability of stars in a genre whose artistic merits are considered negligible (if they're considered at all), The Expendables 2 is indispensable entertainment.

Unfocused, and feeling mostly incomplete in even the most basic standards of documentary film, This Time unfortunately reflects an amateur approach that is felt not just in the filmmaking but in the very people trying to bring The Sweet Inspirations, Pat Hodges and Bobby Belfry to bigger recognition.

The Campaign is insidiously stupid, a laugh-free water balloon lazily tossed at the institution of politics, and one that makes "Semi-Pro" look like a lost Robert Altman film.

Viscerally, The Bourne Legacy packs a punch. If you're looking for a traditional sequel though, you'll probably be disappointed, but if it's a whole new ride you're after, you've come to the right place. Bourne has indeed been reborn.

ParaNorman is a micro-sized masterpiece that wears its heart (and its half-eaten brains) on its sleeve.

A pastiche of almost too many movies to count as a remake of just one, Total Recall is mindless, middling fare that fails to utilize – much less expand – the provocative concepts at the core of its iconic 1990 predecessor.

Anyone watching Assassin's Bullet will be gripped with a similar sensation -- to be anywhere but watching this movie.