Frankel's movie is as refreshing as a walk in the woods and surprising as a chance encounter with the best that nature can offer.

They're an entertaining foursome, and Estevez guides them through lovely scenery, clever sight gags and personal confessions with leisurely skill.

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

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.

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.

War Horse takes time reaching its full emotional gallop with a late sequence combining man, beast and barbed wire. Yet it remains a technically magnificent ride throughout, and a checklist of visual influences from "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "Gone with the Wind."

This is a slight movie, but it's Williams' all the way (possibly to an Oscar nod) while the rest of the cast supports her well.

Carnage gives Polanski the best opportunity to express his devilish sense of humor in decades, proving again that comedy really is tragedy happening to someone else.

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

Chronicle is so clever about the absurd, and so much fun to watch, that I'm almost disappointed the ending doesn't leave room for a sequel.

This movie embraces everything that should make it lousy, calling out itself for aping the source's bad ideas then flipping the script with meta precision.

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

Remember that ultra-violent scene in "Old Boy" when the dude plowed through a subway platform of bad guys and was the only one left standing? Multiply it by four or five and that's The Raid: Redemption.

The Avengers is as brawny and lamebrainy as any comic book movie deserves to be, capped by a 40-minute assault pummeling senses as few action sequences ever have.

Director John Madden and an ensemble of polished actors in their second primes make this a constant amusement and a nice alternative at the movies.

While the result isn't the greatest show on Earth, it certainly is a lot of fun.

Even when Magic Mike is skimpier than a g-string it soars on daring, as if Soderbergh asked himself who could possibly make a good movie from such offbeat material, answered "I can," and did.

These characters don't realize they're funny, and the actors are determined not to push it. Willis fares best, playing against in-control type; Murray fans expecting a comedy explosion won't find it here.

It's often convulsively funny.

Farrell's diction is a noticeable upgrade from Schwarzenegger's but there's also his superior portrayal of sweaty apprehension and killer instinct.

Working in tandem they (Gordon-Levitt/Shannon) make Premium Rush a movie that's off the chain, as the kids say.

Arbitrage is a classy soap opera with a charismatic louse at its center, without "Margin Call" didactics, or the misplaced empathy of "The Company Men."

Frankenweenie is stitched together with love and a bit raggedy, like Sparky the dog in question.

The movie's first half is its funniest, as Moore sets up this alternate low-resolution universe.

How many surprises and peaks can Walken possibly have left, after so many movies and memorable roles? Well, there's this one.

Snitch is grittily streetwise, and until its last 20 minutes fairly credible compared to other movies "inspired by" true stories.

Stoker operates in a perpetual state of dread, a sophisticated Southern gothic that starts out confusing and winds up as a perversely humorous coming-of-age yarn.

Tampa Bay wears fringe nihilism well, including wet-fever dreams of trigger-happy angels floating on cannabis clouds and dusted with cocaine like beignets waiting to be licked clean. Or drug gangstas sporting cornrows and gold-grill teeth, living large and thinking three-ways. Film as a fetish tool, that's what Spring Breakers is all about, y'all.