I didn't believe a word of the film and found myself feeling nothing but (I'm sure this wasn't Kaye's point) detachment.

Can The Hunger Games, in the movie version directed by Gary Ross, successfully navigate the crossing from page to screen? Our answer: Eh.

It's pointed, a piece of domestic comedy that starts with the unappealing sight of an overgrown slacker hunched on a faux leather couch in a dingy basement and subtly winds its way into a tender, wise and completely delightful film about family.

The project loses traction toward the end, as the picture strains to become a full-blooded action film - the very thing it spends the rest of its time mocking. And yet 21 Jump Street earns my genial nod because of its limber, 120-IQ take on the whole notion of movie revivals.

Casa de mi Padre is flawed in that it wouldn't be particularly enticing in any language.

It's beautifully photographed and explained at every stage from market to table, a foodie's dream night at the movies. The gentle shaping of the fish and sushi could lull you into a trance. A hungry trance.

It's only when it takes an unfortunate wrong turn from playful wit into the dramatic and sentimental - Hallström's speciality - that the movie starts to unravel.

Even in a predictable horror film like Silent House, Olsen draws empathy like a magnet.

The result is that John Carter plays like an alternate, inferior version of "Avatar"…Plus fleeting hints of John Ford's "The Searchers" - for this is also a Western.

The movie looks like every other rom com, all spacious apartments and sleek, woodsy vacation homes, but it takes you through a wider range of responses to the relationships and characters than most.

It's no wonder the movie is no walk in the park, even with a pretty soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy (again, like About a Boy). It never feels inspirational - it's too gritty and dark - and there isn't a single easy solution in sight for either Nick or Jonathan.

By our count, three of the core SEALs are maimed or dead by the end. A new baby is left without her loving father. The picture ends not with a parade but with a funeral. And that may be the toughest, most lasting image in this cockamamie, Pentagon-approved war adventure.

Wanderlust, a comedy that looks way better than it actually is set amidst the dreck of late winter releases.

Undefeated is well-edited by director Daniel Lindsay and beautifully photographed by his co-director T.J. Martin - the shacks of North Memphis look poetically disheveled as shot from a moving car - but it is telling that the coach emerges as the "star" of this documentary.

Arrietty brings the same magic to the mundane, elevating the ordinary confines of everyday life into sumptuous surprises. And while Arrietty lacks the sweep of "Spirited Away," "Princess Mononoke," or "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind," it preserves all the trademark sensitivity to the emotional turmoil of adolescence.

Technically, movies don't give off a scent, but This Means War is so smarmy that it seems to reek of cheap cologne.

This sugary sweet chick flick is so rich in its ripeness and full in its foolishness that I look forward to groaning in happy horror when I inevitably see it again, whether while drinking or when laid low by the kind of flu whose symptoms include a desire to watch Meg Ryan rom coms on cable.

Simultaneously diverting and annoying.

I wanted very much for West's new movie to evoke films like "The Others" or "The Orphanage," which made me, in the moment at least, a believer in ghosts. The Innkeeper's payoff lacked that kind of oomph, and weirdly, the pairing of Luke and Claire brought movies about work relationships, like "Clerks" and "Office Space," more to mind than ghost stories.

It's a decent February movie that smartly extends Washington's God-on-the-run character.

Transcending Holo-kitsch, In Darkness is often a thrilling adventure picture - as if Anne Frank had found an "Inglourious Basterd" to help her make "The Great Escape."

It's silly enough that young teens are unlikely to be drawn to it unless they've got a thing for Hudgens or want to take an early peek at Hutcherson, who will soon be seen as Peeta in "The Hunger Games." He was great as a sulky brat in "The Kids Are All Right" but in Journey 2 he comes across as wooden, dull and though not yet 20, too old for roles like these.

The Woman in Black is a welcome addition to the old canon; renouncing innovation, embracing anachronism, it's almost "The Artist" of ghost movies. To anyone who fancies throwback stories of the supernatural, there's nothing so appealing as a well-preserved corpse.

Declaration of War is about being under siege from illness, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. This modern-day Juliette and Romeo find their own tragedy, but are not poisoned by it.

There may be no role Barrymore is better suited to than that of sanctimonious environmentalist.

What's unusual about the sometimes screwy but mostly smart and always heartfelt Perfect Sense - is its search for a middle ground.

True to its grim prospectus, The Grey dwells in haunted machismo to the very end.

With its unpredictable sexual politics and quirky little hero/heroine Albert Nobbs has the edge of quinine, a peculiar taste that won't entice everyone but worked for me.