It's a story languorously told in three chapters, the first two in the late 1980s and the third 15 years later. Each could be a movie unto themselves. Together they prove Cianfrance to be an effectively unobtrusive storyteller, crafting without artifice what book critics would call a page turner.

A feel-good movie in the most positive meaning of that term, thanks to the Motown music and O'Dowd's cheeky charm.

The Runaways isn't just about rock 'n' roll; it IS rock 'n' roll, as loud, sexy, sometimes sloppy and ultimately exhilarating as the music can be.

A sensory and intellectual overload from start to finish, a brawny, brainy summer movie that may infuriate as many viewers as it enraptures.

This movie is a last chance to save the series, which it does.

If he made The Ghost Writer under a pseudonym, it might be roundly hailed as the classy white-knuckler it is. But it's Polanski's name above the title, with his own ghosts haunting each frame.

There's no way to make this a feel-good movie, and admirably the Duplass brothers don't try. Cyrus finds its humor in dark places, through characters bringing out the worst in each other.

This summer's funniest movie.

The choicest performance in Animal Kingdom is Weaver's sing-song sinister matriarch of the Cody clan, a cheery sort with the benign nickname "Mama Smurf."

This is how a romantic vampire flick should work.

Megamind's Kryptonite is a common weakness for any comedy so fast out of the blocks: It simply runs out of surprises.

Christensen plays him with Lecter-like intensity; the unsettling calmness of someone capable of anything.

When she's (Hawkins) on camera, I'd swear the screen bends into a smile.

This is what the holidays need: a good, Swift kick in the funny bone.

True Grit is a very good movie that might be more embraceable if we didn't know who was pulling the trigger.

For the initiated, however, Alfredson weaves a tidy web from loose ends left dangling.

This is old-school monumental filmmaking, without CGI tricks or many soundstage comforts for a dedicated cast. David Lean would probably approve.

It's about time that another Scream flick came along to gouge the new cliches out of their sockets. Scream 4 does it in grandly Guignol style.

It's deja vu all over again in The Hangover Part II, only dirtier and more dangerous, if you can imagine that.

This movie embraces its inner yokel.

This movie, saddle sores and all, is a lot of fun.

It works because Timberlake and Kunis are totally in control of their damaged characters without winking at the audience, as if to say: "Aren't we cute, behaving so naughty?" Their sex is amusingly awkward, and their repressed longings more so. It's the kind of chemistry that comes along once in a generation.

Ritchie stages plenty of gunfights and beatdowns to satisfy action fans, pausing to consider the beauty of violence before resuming speed and piling on more.

Leaner than "Harry Potter's" adventures, meaner than the "Twilight" saga, The Hunger Games lives up to its source if not entirely the hype.

For two hours it's a fun head trip.

Thompson's fans will embrace its twisted verbal dexterity, romantically imagining the author feverishly pulling strings from the beyond.

A Dangerous Method is a movie believing the most formidable sex organ really is the brain.

Hugo is Scorsese's most personal film, from the standpoint of both an artist and a grandfather. He is as interested in Melies' posterity as in making a movie that his descendants can see before they're adults.