Hotel Transylvania isn't a complete stinker. Sandler, speaking in a pitch close to his Opera Man routine from his days on Saturday Night Live, is less obnoxious than usual. The visuals are consistently enticing - the castle/hotel is artfully rendered...And there are some bright and funny lines.

A fanciful film with the patina of hyper-realism, Looper is well served by actors who behave not as if they were dropped carelessly into the future but spent their whole desperate lives there.

The performances here are so sharp that viewers may wish End of Watch has been shot by someone who knew how to find the right point of view for a scene and leave it there.

The mind may clamor for more, but the eye, traveling over this visual history of Diana Vreeland, is pleased.

If the modest and moving Trouble With the Curve won't overwhelm anybody, it's still an engaging winner, like a junk-ball pitcher who stays in the bigs on grit and heart.

The performances of these actors are reason enough to go. The reason to stay is Lawrence.

Watson makes a smooth matriculation from the England-made Harry Potter epics to this movie's thrifty, six-week Pittsburgh shoot.

Roger Michell's movie is, pretty consistently, dreadful.

Gere is being talked about as an Oscar contender - he's never been nominated. January is a long time off yet, but his name is certainly worth putting on the long list.

In its lesser moments, of which there are more, Liberal Arts calls to mind more the spirit of an alumni magazine, so bathed in nostalgia for academia that you expect autumn leaves to flutter down to the theater floor.

Sometimes engrossing, sometimes exasperating romance. In these scenes, Cotillard shows she doesn't need the validation of Cannes or the Academy. Her strong, subtle performance is gloriously winning on its own.

Most viewers are likely to be impressed more by the magnitude of the effort than the magnificence of the effect. Cloud Atlas is a Terry Gilliam movie without the kinks, a Wong Kar-wai film without the smoky dreamscape, a time-and-Space Oddity that remains frustratingly earthbound. Put it another way: this is no "Speed Racer."

In terms of quality, though, Argo is just so-so.

Knightley embodies Anna as a girlish woman who has never felt erotic love; once smitten, she is raised to heavenly ecstasy before tumbling into the abyss of shame. It's a nervy performance, acutely attuned to the volcanic changes a naive creature must enjoy and endure on her first leap into mad passion. She helps make Anna Karenina an operatic romance worth singing about.

Apparently Bachelorette has been divisive, with audiences either falling hard for it or walking away disgusted. I'd have fallen harder for it if I'd walked away more disgusted.

For a tale of thieving, The Words plods along. Not that a literary heist is as exciting as a bank robbery, but there's a remarkable lack of tension in this story.

Despite enough pummeling to flatten Rocky Balboa in all six movies, the only thing that truly rewards your attendance is Pitt in another effortless star performance.

Keough is nearly worth risking life (Diane's) and limb (Martin's) for. The eldest grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, she has a pale, dreamy lusciousness that puts as viewer in mind of Amanda Seyfried, though without the overt sexuality. Her not-quite-there appeal matches both the opacity of Martin's intentions and the entire underhanded, underwhelming experience that The Good Doctor offers.

While the movie is glorious to watch, it brings no coherence or insight to its two main characters.

Sleepwalk is oddly soothing, like a cup of camomile tea before bedtime.

Many of D’Souza’s charges in his movie are either piffling (Obama returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the British Embassy), wrong (the U.S. is drilling for at least as much oil now as in the George W. Bush) or murky.

So appealing is Gordon-Levitt that, for great stretches of his new movie, I suspended my disapproval of his character and just went with the nonstop flow. He almost persuaded me that the film is, if not a premium rush, then an economy high.

If this riveting, repelling film is to be seen, it must be not at home but in a theater, where you are confined in a room, like Sandra and Becky, deciding whether to watch, and how you would react.

You have no idea what's coming next, except that it will be wildly creative and beautiful. These two know how to mix up a very unusual and successful cinematic recipe.

What I'm saying is that I resisted the film but it won me over, a little more than I care to admit.

Sparkle, while occasionally silly in a way that made a preview audience titter, is decent entertainment.

Whatever director Peter Hedges' intent, the movie itself, a sentimental blend of magical realism and saccharine emotions, is oddly false. It made me want to go on a sugar cleanse.

In this bad-better-best movie, the Flik story is the bad, the choir singing much better and Peters the soul-stirring best.