A passable popcorn movie, but fans of the first film who expect lightning to strike twice are liable to get burned.

Streep is astonishing, conveying Child's gusto, her quavering voice, even her height.

A good nature film - and a great technical achievement.

A charming throwback filled with authentic characters.

The several allusions to Thomas Mann’s forbidden-love novel “Death in Venice” are apt, but Yossi is also a standalone film and an extraordinary sequel.

As the blindered Abe, relative-unknown Gelber earns a sympathetic pat on the head. But as the character is braying for attention, he's stuck in his stall, while genuine dark horse Donna Murphy carries the narrative load as the middle-aged co-worker who prances into Abe's daydreams.

A colorful indictment of corporate infestation, but it's missing a prescription.

At its heart, this is a compassionate character study. Robbie’s tenderness toward his son and his remorse for a street fight are the raw ingredients of a ripening consciousness.

By the time the meta-movie and cute-dog subplots collide in the desert, this high-concept vehicle has run out of gas. Movies about the filmmaking process may never get old, but self-referential hit men smell like yesterday's fish story.

By turning a whistle-blower into a tragicomic figure, Soderbergh sustains our interest in a complicated financial scheme and rewards it with a kickback of ghastly laughs.

Although there are gentle detour discussions about advertising in classrooms and school buses, Spurlock's ironic approach can't convince us that ads are toxic. Indeed, when he visits sprawling Sao Paolo, Brazil, where all outdoor advertising has been banned, it seems as sterile as Stalingrad.

The beauty of October Country, beside its artful images, is how it compresses the windblown fortunes of working-class America into the fallen leaves of one forlorn family.

The best kind of comic-book movie. It's stylish and spectacular, yet it's rooted in history and human emotions. It's smart yet it's funny. It's wise yet it kicks ass when it has to. Just like the U.S. of A.

It's got a grown-up artfulness, but Winter in Wartime could become a lot of boys' favorite movie.

Maybe I enjoyed the similarly themed Kick-Ass because it took me back to that innocent time. Or maybe it's because this is the most brazenly funny bloodbath unleashed on the public since "Pulp Fiction."

This is another one of those phony movies in which a character burrows into someone else's life without telling them she's an axe murderer, a man or a vampire. Not only that, we're supposed to hope that they get it on. I was hoping that everyone involved would get hit by an asteroid.

The delivery pouch for Premium Rush promises a white-hot thriller from the bike-messenger subculture. But what's inside the package seems like a lukewarm action-comedy from the pile of scripts that Matthew Broderick rejected after "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

You would expect an epic with brains and hearts. Instead we settle for sturdy craft, with a stellar cast struggling to breathe life into the cold material.

Paul Simon and a Parisian orangutan tell us the same thing: It's all happening at the zoo.

Two incompatible movies duke it out in Bandslam. Although it's the wimpy teen musical that prevails, it's the misfit coming-of-age story that leaves an impression.

Photography — and thus filmmaking — is painting with light. The connection is illuminated in the lovely Renoir, a twilight-years biography of the great French Impressionist.

Not just a reboot - it's a rejuvenation. From the first image of sensory awakening to the final acceptance of adult responsibility, it pulses with the warm blood of a very human hero.

The campus comedy Pitch Perfect harmonizes high-end performance with low-brow spoofery. It's like a National Lampoon parody where the targets write the jokes.

Do yourself and your kids a favor. On the way to multiplex to see "The Avengers," tell them The Fairy is about an all-powerful superheroine. Someday, they'll find the words to thank you.

Succeeds as both advocacy and entertainment by focusing on the family.

This melodrama about spousal abuse and honor killings might be too grim to bear, but Kekilli keeps it centered.

People over 60 are as sexual and complicated as their grandchildren, and there ought to be more movies about them, but only an audience as constipated as these characters could mistake this lukewarm stream of pablum for a hard nugget of truth.

Obviously a labor love, and its very existence in a godforsaken marketplace is a minor miracle.