On balance, this new cinematic take on a 75-year-old icon constitutes a worthy Superman movie and a modest improvement for a franchise that had creatively stalled. 

On balance, this new cinematic take on a 75-year-old icon constitutes a worthy Superman movie and a modest improvement for a franchise that had creatively stalled. 

Whedon goes for a kind of radical naturalism, an understated approach that suggests the characters could be your friends and neighbors. 

This type of thing has already been diluted by...Funny or Die...The main difference...is that This is The End is profane in the extreme, an R-rated stoner comedy gleefully grafted onto a 'splatstick' horror picture... 

Intrigues not with good guy-bad guy shtick, but with the conundrum of how to live morally in an inherently immoral West. 

Although Vaughn's riffing skills remain in fine form, as do Wilson's, the story makes every obvious and conventional choice. 

So preposterous in its particulars, so ludicrous in its lowdown, that you're liable to kick yourself silly for having bothered to play along. 

Brims with funny ideas both verbal and visual that are finely tuned by Baumbach and his cast, and sharply edited... 

Nothing new, but given its solidly built kids' adventure, I'm not going to, y'know, look down on it. 

Less like a movie and more like a contractual obligation. 

The main selling point here—and it's a considerable one—is Shannon, who shows new shadings in the role of Kuklinski... 

Smart or...dumb? Yes, and...fun to hang around with for a couple of hours. 

Luhrmann approaches the story and directs his actors in ways that hold them at a distance from us: the overkill plays less as bold art and more as lack of trust in the source material. 

Inviting photography and a relentless pace complement Claude's unfolding narrative, but the big thrills are in the deftly drawn characters...and the incisive satire... 

Works best when it sticks close to Henry, whose broad grin fails to mask a growing desperation. Quaid not only makes a believably corn-fed patriarch, but he captures the mien of one who is slowly ceding his soul... 

Perhaps it's damning Renoir with faint praise to call it agreeable, but Gilles Bourdos' film...shows an admirable restraint, quiet simplicity, and lush pictorial beauty. 

The most satisfying cinematic experience we've had at the multiplex thus far this year, and largely through its disinterest in playing along with movie trends. 

There are two types of people in the world. Those who should under no circumstances see the horror sequel/reboot Evil Dead and those who just gotta see it. 

Sunny days, blue skies, and rippling blue waters lined with greenery...Plain nice, and there's nothing wrong with that. 

Do not consume The Host before operating heavy machinery. Side effects may include spontaneous coma or fits of giggling. 

Appears to have been market-tested to within an inch of its life, so despite a theme of finding the capacity to evolve, the picture remains mired in the tar pit of formula. 

This pretty period-pictorial companion piece to the novel fatally misses out on the brain-firing raw buzz that Kerouac felt and passed on to his readers... 

Park’s skills for surreal subjectivity and the mischievously weird certainly don’t hurt, but they can’t quite banish Stoker’s narrative speed bumps and draughts of cold air... 

Swims upstream against high-definition with a defiantly lo-fi approach that's also ingeniously evocative of the historical period. 

The film isn't a worldbeater as either old-school journalism of rigorous reportage or dazzling showmanship...will be of most use as a time capsule of sorts... 

The mealy half-truth director Peter Webber...and screenwriters Vera Blasi and David Klass settle for just winds up a waste of everyone's time. 

Provides plenty of moving case studies...[but] it's most useful for its prismatic look at the problem of American hunger, examining the problem's recent history, its root causes...and its inextricability from other national crises... 

In its modern way, Snitch is almost Dickensian in its intent, missing no opportunity for melodramatic confrontation as it puts a (baby) face on a social ill. 

The material calls out for a more expressive cinematographic treatment. Had the film been less antiseptic and more bold in its visuals and the emotional depths of its performances, it could have been a classic; instead, it's a rather ordinary indie. 

The 'other' Oscar-nominated feature about a war on terror, Dror Moreh’s documentary The Gatekeepers proves more intellectually engaging than Hollywood’s Zero Dark Thirty, and at least as unsettling. 

Does Sparks have to treat people like total idiots...?...[A] soulless-cash-grab. 

McCarthy is a worthy successor to John Candy, who also had a gift for warming up caricatures with loveable humanity. 

Doesn't avoid all of the traps of the genre, but Hoffman does show good taste, particularly in casting. 

Has significant blemishes that don't quite come out in the wash...but the picture persists on the strength of its committed performances. 

The sheer bulk of talent involved (top-tier technicians and designers included) turns out to be a case of water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. 

Takes dicey material—the story of one privileged family's suffering during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—and transcends its political incorrectness by focusing on the human condition. 

The Baby Boomer teaming no one was asking for—Billy Crystal and Bette Midler—melded to that most moribund of genres, rugrats 'comedy'... 

A mixed bag of suitable and not-so-suitable choices. On balance, though, it's about as compelling a screen version of Les Mis as we have any right to expect...Pop a dramamine and you'll be fine. 

There's a case to be made that blood-spattering revenge pictures, no matter how evil the villain, are cultural poison, but if this is what it takes to [get] Don Johnson as a dyed-in-the-wool racist done up as Colonel Sanders, well, so be it. 

[McQuarrie] spreads a unearned veneer of intelligence over...a plot one character aptly describes as 'grassy-knoll ludicrous.' 

Silly and nice, basically unfunny but basically innocuous—so as satisfying as your average leftovers. 