A genuine triumph, a great movie with astounding performances so natural, so genuine, that you forget it's a movie.

Slow, stark and sometimes surreptitiously beautiful, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is as cold and clinical an examination of evil as you could imagine.

The Secret in Their Eyes never lets you forget that you're watching a movie - and never lets you wish you were doing anything else.

A compulsively watchable look at Rivers.

Please Give is an almost perfectly rendered slice of life, buoyant with wonderful performances.

Polanski builds suspense slowly, exquisitely. It's not a matter of shocking the audience, although there are surprises, but of creating an ever-growing sense of dread.

It relies on a singularly brilliant performance by Colin Firth to make it one of the year's more satisfying films.

Never miss a chance to see Helen Mirren. You certainly could do worse as far as movie advice goes. Mirren may not be the only reason to see The Last Station, about the final year of Leo Tolstoy's long, eventful life, but she's the best reason.

There's no hard-and-fast rule that says you have to like the main character in a movie. It's more a custom, really - a custom that Ben Stiller stretches nearly to the breaking point in Greenberg.

There is a predictability to the story, but that's OK. The acting is superb, Holbrook in particular, making That Evening Sun an understated pleasure.

A perverse delight, the rare film that makes you feel good about feeling bad (or at least watching others do so).

Terribly Happy must surely be the greatest Danish Western ever made.

The visuals are stunning, perhaps the most fully realized of any film.

Although Jonah Hill has been sweetly, profanely funny in such films as "Superbad" and "Get Him to the Greek," in Cyrus he's a revelation.

Baruchel is outstanding, giving Hiccup just the right amount of confidence buried several layers beneath the shame he feels in not continuing the family business. Butler's a head-banger from way back, so he's convincing. And Ferrera gets the grrl-power vibe just right.

Writer and director Ti West accesses all the hot buttons for fans of the genre in a manner that doesn't make fun of it (and its followers) in a "Scary Movie" way, but instead treats it with the appropriate amount of respect. (Key word: appropriate.)

Settles for simply being goofy good fun.

This is unhinged genius, an amazing piece of acting. Brutal, yes, but magnetic all the same.

It's Douglas' movie - and you've got a fine movie.

What's breathtaking here is the scope of greed, corruption, arrogance and above all cynicism on display, not just regarding the system of government but the people it ostensibly serves.

Most of all, though, it's a welcome, offbeat look at a couple of originals, something that's in woefully short supply.

A funny, heartfelt look at families, relationships and the lies that prop them up as much as tear them down.

It's also perfectly content to be an insanely violent, funny take on an established genre. And in that respect, Kick-Ass lives up to its name.

An unruly mix of science, morality, family dysfunction, horror and finger-down-the-throat gross-out ridiculousness.

If you're game, "Parnassus" is a richly rewarding experience. If not, it comes off like pretentious nonsense.

The Runaways broke new ground. And if "The Runaways" doesn't, it's still a movie worth watching - and listening to.

Suffice it to say that it's something that would make Austin Powers blush, baby, but it's not supposed to be funny.

As an encore for Brand's Aldous, it's a welcome return. And for Hill, it's a chance to really shine.

Eventually, all of the stories will come together in a somewhat contrived way. The film's parts are greater than the whole. But the parts are worth the effort.

An enjoyable movie, in many ways a beautiful movie to look at. One only wishes he'd been a little more ambitious.

It is a question that has vexed lovers of fine cinema for years: What if you made a teen sex comedy with grown-ups? And now, thanks to Hot Tub Time Machine, we have our answer: It would be pretty cool.

To pretend that the film doesn't make a political statement is silly. Of course it does. It wouldn't be effective at all if it didn't.

It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached.

It does give Cera a chance to play at being a bad boy. But it's just that - playing at it.

Does the movie have anything new to say, anything different from John G. Avildsen's 1984 original, with Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita? Not particularly.

If you found "Shrek the Third," the third film in the "Shrek" franchise, tired, it will probably come as no surprise that Shrek Forever After is downright exhausted.

Forget Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. I'm backing Team David, as in David Slade, the director who has finally managed to breathe some life into the "Twilight" series, heretofore a deadly dull undead undertaking.

The good news is that it's better than the second "Men in Black." The bad news is: not all that much. There are a couple of clever ideas, a few funny moments, a wealth of computer-generated special effects. But it's hollow at its core, and the asides have lost some of their spark.

Daybreakers isn't a great film, but it's a good one, and in a market oddly lousy with vampire tales, it's an original.

Bigger, louder and dumber than its predecessor, Iron Man 2 is still a lot of fun.

A mean-spirited little movie, investing its limited charms in all the wrong characters.

It's an uneven proposition, veering wildly from genuinely funny scenes directly into ridiculousness and back again. But every time Shawn Levy's movie makes that journey, it's harder to get back on solid footing.

True enough, she's trying to do the right thing. But she never quite gets there. And that gets old, making "Ramona" wear out its welcome long before it should have.

Both the film and television project were directed by Martin Campbell. He creates a nice level of tension throughout, and there are a couple of legitimate shocks (including one jaw-dropper).

The interviews throughout are the best part of the movie - the least heavy-handed, yet most effective, element. There is a message here of the necessity for tolerance, but 8: The Mormon Proposition would have been better had its makers presented it in a more consistent, artful fashion.

A lot of fun for horror fans, a nice little jaunt through paranoia and conspiracy theories.

Barber uses various stylistic devices - hand-held cameras, cellphone cameras, etc. - that make a somewhat slow story seem to move at a brisker pace.

His (Borte) film would have been much better had it stuck to its guns as social commentary and not lapsed into a predictable, and predictably lame, love story.

Carroll purists and freshman English majors may be aghast at the change in story, but for those who watched "Avatar" and marveled at the images but were left wanting by the wooden acting and tired story, "Alice" is a treat.

Scott's epic - and it's hard to think of anything this big, this elaborate and, no doubt, this expensive as anything but - is very much an origination story, a prequel, if you will.

Its over-the-top violence is cartoonish at times, menacing at others - which is a good thing. And truly, if one must wander a barren, post-apocalyptic landscape with somebody, who better to wander with than Denzel Washington?

A pretty good action movie for about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, it lasts 106.

Nothing seems real here, with everything too broadly drawn.

The audience should be given game controllers upon entering the theater. It wouldn't mean the film would make any more sense, but at least you'd feel like you had some say in the matter.

Trouble is, it all adds up to . . . not much.

The story is the problem here, devolving into a ridiculous situation that produces far more groans than chills or thrills.

Percy Jackson isn't a great movie, but it's a good one, trotting out kernels of Greek mythology like so many Disney Channel references. For the most part, it works.

It offers Bratt maybe his best role ever as Che, a tough-guy neighborhood personality struggling to come to grips with his son's homosexuality.

If you are a stickler for movies that follow the laws of, say, physics, nature and common sense, The A-Team might not be for you. If, on the other hand, you get a kick out of exchanges like this - "Are they trying to shoot down that other drone?" "No. They're trying to fly that tank" - then you're in for a treat.

A by-the-numbers, good-vs.-evil tale.

There's plenty of gross-out humor and lots of sex jokes, some of them absurd, some really funny. But what elevates She's Out of My League - it doesn't turn a 5 into a 10, but it helps - is heart, of which its characters have a surprising plenty.

How you feel about Knight and Day will depend largely on your feelings about Cruise. If you can't divorce his performance from his off-screen antics, well, that's a problem, here and elsewhere. If you're willing to watch what's on-screen and leave it at that, there's fun to be had.

The overall feel is one of a generic, feel-good drama, albeit one with Harrison Ford stomping around most of the time as if someone kicked him in the shins. One suspects that this is a story that deserved better.

The Losers does a perfectly serviceable job of achieving its low ambitions.

The movie plays like a missed opportunity, with its by-the-numbers scares and a story that feels disjointed, hurried in some places, slow in others.

Awash in mawkish sentimentality, Dear John still will move you deeply - if you're a 12-year-old girl.

It's a competently made movie - in Jackson's hands it could hardly be anything but - yet rarely a moving one.

Doesn't really know what it wants to be. Morel would have done better to remember the "to thine own self be true" bit, and stayed with the dunderheaded shoot-'em-up vibe, with Travolta having a blast, often literally.

It's hard not to be disappointed with The Change-Up, which in the end follows the basic conventions of the switched-identity genre, if more profanely, changing up not much at all.

Charm, alas, is the one thing lost in all the banging and clanging of the remake.

Neeson's performance is so eerie, in a buttoned-down sort of way.

Focus. Tooth Fairy isn't as bad as you may have feared. It's not all that good, either, but at least it's possible to sit through it and hold down your popcorn.

Timothy Hutton is a good actor. So whom to blame for Multiple Sarcasms?

Call it what you want, but the best word to describe it is: unnecessary.

It's not as if every funny movie has to offer something in the way of social commentary or greater insight. Sometimes funny is just funny. Sometimes, as is too often the case here, it's not.

There's far too much going on in Valentine's Day, and far too little of it is worth the trouble.

Jonah Hex somehow manages to waste the talents of Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Aidan Quinn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a story that combines vengeance, the occult and an Old West war on terror (really).

A by-the-numbers romantic comedy as predictable as it is cloying.

There's not a lot of humor here, just violence and more violence. The acting is fine enough - Whitaker, of the talented bunch, seems to be having the best time - but the slicing and dicing overpowers the cast, the story and everything else.

A movie that makes little sense, is dumb when it's not being stupid and yet is still at times laugh-out-loud funny.

For the most part the jokes here are tired. William H. Macy is a welcome presence in the small role of Phil's offbeat-but- intense boss.

Dumb, lazy, obvious and largely pointless.

Sex and the City 2 isn't a feature film as much as it is consumer porn. The audience is not asked to relate to the characters, or at least what we remember of them, as much as to their shoes, their bags, their apartments, their couture, their stuff.

Maybe your kids will insist that you see Furry Vengeance. Then again, wouldn't this be the perfect time to let them test their independence and sit through it alone? Otherwise, good luck. You have my condolences.

A harmless little mess of a movie whose cast you've mostly heard of, including Tim Allen, who also directed.