The Dark Knight Rises declares its importance with each scene but seldom backs up the claims. It is a climax more fitful than fulfilling, solemn to a fault and begging the Joker's question: "Why so serious?"

As Kay and Arnold lurch toward intimacy, the roles bring out a playful side seldom seen in Streep and practically never in Jones, his signature surliness melting into disarming smiles and tenderness.

The Campaign is below-the-Beltway humor, stretching obvious targets to raunchy extremes.

The globetrotting is reined in, the mayhem at each stop just as exciting. Renner is a sturdy action hero, with an interesting face that unlike Damon's appears to have taken a punch or two.

The movie's erratic pleasures are like its ghosts; now you see them, now you don't.

Kind of like Lawless, a movie about bootleggers more violently authentic than previous takes on the subject, from "Thunder Road" to the first half of "The Last American Hero." What Lawless has over those moonshine melodramas is a striking sense of period and setting.

Hotel Transylvania doesn't raise the bar for animation or comedy but it's fun, and nice for once to have a different reason to say "boo" after an Adam Sandler flick.

The Queen of Versailles leaves viewers with one feeling about the Siegels: Let them eat stale cake.

This Must Be the Place is a movie existing in a zonked-out realm where reality smashes head-on with a train-wreck hero too strange to be real, unless you're the love child of Ozzy Osbourne and the Cure's Robert Smith.

Lincoln is like a thoroughly researched poli-sci term paper come to life, with interesting personal material about the participants relegated to footnotes.

Rise of the Guardians is an all-star addition to holiday movies lists but the real question is: Which holiday?

It's a familiar, straightforward story, carried from start to finish by Winstead, who makes Kate an interesting study in contradictions.

It's an audacious mashup that Baz Luhrmann would approve, lending freshness to Tolstoy's too-often-told tale.

A movie as fun as it is flawed.

Beautiful Creatures gives supernatural teenage romance a good name, or at least a better one than the entire "Twilight Saga" offered.

21 and Over remains enjoyable for what it is and all it cares to be, which is nothing any respectable movie critic should recommend, and I'm down with that.

The movie needs one or two central characters directly affected by the dictatorship, in order to create more tension around a conclusion that's already known.

Wolverine is a solid start to the ever-lengthening summer movie season, when all that matters is the bang and the bucks paid for it.

This franchise that won't die began in 2001 as The Fast and the Furious and has pretty much run through every title permutation, so the inevitable next chapter might be called only "The & The 7."

Efron makes hay with his richest role post-High School Musical, making Dean a rural rake with conflicting charisma.

Nothing much happens in Greenberg, yet Stiller and co-star Greta Gerwig make inconsequence tolerable with solid performances.

The movie maintains its posture of mystery long after the solution is evident, and the best suggestion is to just smirk with the flow.

Even stock characters -- Zoe's tirelessly supportive friends and relatives -- get style points for giving jobs to old pros Klein, Linda Lavin (Alice) and "Mr. C" himself, Tom Bosley. Of course, the babies are adorable.

When the fadeout comes, viewers may feel as unsatisfied with the movie as these characters are with their lives.

It's as slick and fun as summertime entertainment should be. Downey is still an arresting presence, glib to the nth degree and supremely confident that he's smarter than anyone else.

Even as Touching Home finds those moments, it's easier to appreciate the stars' dedication to a grass roots project than the project itself.

What kept me laughing is the genuine camaraderie among Sandler's posse, the way they almost play themselves that perfectly suits this slim material.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is an elegant scandal almost devoid of true passion, no matter how many times the nude lovers artfully mingle.