Spike Lee called 1992's Malcolm X 'the picture I was born to make,' and star Denzel Washington referred to the titular civil-rights leader as 'the role of a lifetime.' They're both right... 
Perhaps the title sets an expectation Ken Kwapis’ movie can’t quite deliver. 
If the mere mention of the blue-footed booby sends you into paroxysms, The Big Year is the film for you. 
Intensely juvenile, casually sexist, and blatantly stupid in ways that few if any over the age of 'T for Teen' or bereft of a Y chromosome could enjoy. 
Though it does thrill with intense, close-cropped action photography, swift editing, and vivid sound design, The Grey makes as much of an impression by being unexpectedly emotional. 
Except as a tool for pediatric grief counseling, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close amounts to a fetishization of its own trappings (the boy, NYC, 9/11) more interested in Oscar than Oskar. 
Finds Soderbergh keeping it simple, stupid, by filling the story's hollowness with kick-butt action and elements of style. 
This fable of the disposable performer rising above his class transcends ordinary fiction to be an expressive visual record of the art of bullfighting: primal, brutal, repellent and magnetic in equal measure. 
A stylish genre exercise...one might just as well say the L.A. story unfolds at the corner of Michael Mann and David Lynch. 
Proof plays cleverly with the arcane mysteries of game theory, and if it's only a game, happily, it's one worthy of exhibition. 
Condurache and Weisz’s 'small corrections' make a big difference in steering the movie right, enough to make The Whistleblower a decent entry in the genre of political passion plays. 
[Faris] and Evans deserve better than a string of rom-com clichés, including the surprise date in a closed sports arena. Unless you’re Justin Beiber and Selena Gomez, it couldn’t happen to you. 
A slow disintegration of the thin veneer of social niceties, revealing the human animalism underneath. Like Reza's equally popular Art, God of Carnage isn't as deep as it would have you believe, but both plays are catnip for actors. 
50/50 isn’t interested in defeatism, except as one inevitable way station of the film’s appealing emotional ramble. 
Oldman's mid-film music-video performance of 'My Way' before a neon staircase compares favorably—as a revelation of character through performance—to Robert De Niro's framing monologues in Raging Bull. 
What Killer Elite never manages is to convince us of its sociopolitical import...or its emotional resonance. 
While it's unspooling, it has enough visual snap, narrative tension, and humor for a satisfying 'drive-in movie' diversion. 
An orgiastic celebration of Glee concocted by its own creators...sort of like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but with more hot air. 
Shares with...Get Smart roughly the same ratio of silliness and satire, which is to say heavy on the former and light on the latter. 
Justified remains one of the most satisfying hours on television, creating a illusion of the social margins of Southern life that's convincing enough that we want to believe in it. 
The film's self-conscious gestures in the direction of fish-out-of-water comedies, buddy-cop movies and Westerns don't amount to much in and of themselves, but they tie together as a functional clothesline for character comedy and left-field drama. 
A charmer in its gee-whiz, irony-light resuscitation of the movie serials of the '30s. 
Whether coolly dispatching a fly or eating a Wimpy burger with knife and fork, Oldman carefully makes every gesture part of his quiet revelation of character. 
In the hands of actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith, this kid-centric drama provides a welcome family option with positive values and a minimum of frantic, noisy CGI. It's a tale told on a human (and animal) scale. 
Fincher is perfectly suited to the material, with its voluminous clues to be organized and parsed, its emotional austerity, and its serial murder, rape, and sundry sick plot twists. 
What ultimately makes Young Adult worth the trip is Theron’s uncompromising performance, which dares to make Mavis unlikeable and, in the process, earns our pity and, more disturbingly, our identification. 
A landmark screen musical that left its own indelible stamp on popular culture. 
I tell ya, I haven't heard this much talk about ball-dropping since the junior high locker room. 
If only The Help accepted more of Davis’ help, we might have a work of art on our hands instead of another condescending, half-baked history lesson. 
Though this pastiche has been crafted by film nerds and largely for them, Michel Hazanavicius' feature has an emotional generosity that speaks louder than words. 
If you see The Descendants, see it for Clooney (and Woodley), but don’t believe the hype that it’s one for the ages. 
Muppet News Flash! Your friends in felt are back on the big screen, ready and waiting to charm a new generation of…moppets. 
Unmistakably Little Miss Sunshine-y...a sunny sitcom of family dysfunction... 
Strong work from Mayance and Thomas keeps Sarah's Key from rusting amid the sometime soddenness of the script. 
Unsparing character studies, using the specific to illuminate the universal. 
The interviews that make up the balance of the film yield plenty of oddities of modern American life. 
Works brilliantly as an allegory of American repression and willful illusion of order, Lumberton's forced-smile '50s sensibility unable to keep down the anarchic, raging id that is humanity's primal drive. 
A back-to-basics charmer evoking the Pooh short films from the '60s and '70s. 
When they're not risking their lives with exciting spy maneuvers, Blaster works out to Lady Gaga and Juarez updates her Facebook page. Okay, so maybe G-Force is just a tad self-consciously 'hip.' 
Are your kids ready for an existential movie? Turns out they are: Disney's CGI-animated action comedy Bolt is, at its core, a story of one individual's discovery that his sense of reality...has been seriously skewed. 