Going the Distance isn’t perfect – the storytelling is a mess, and there’s never enough plot to really sustain the film – but it’s refreshingly OK
2010’s The Karate Kid is competently made and executed, with charismatic lead performances by Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith
Robert Sedláček’s Největší z Čechů (The Greatest Czechs) is an excellent primer on a very specific brand of Czech humor
Ondine is a highly watchable film, well-paced and interesting throughout, but it’s also strangely aloof
Step Up 3D features camerawork and editing so polished and conventional that it may as well be a golden age movie musical
Grown Ups is faintly amusing in fits and spurts, but it’s otherwise obvious and bland – in other words, lame
When You’re Strange offers up little new for fans of The Doors, telling the familiar story of sudden rise and fall of the band from 1965-71
A Serious Man might be a little too subtle for mainstream tastes, pretentious and initially unsatisfying
The problem with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the use of magic: every other scene features wizards casting spells at each other
The Expendables is the 2010 equivalent of a 1985 Golan-Globus production, a Delta Force or Missing in Action or Cobra
Salt is a breathless, expertly-composed thriller with one nagging flaw: it’s absolutely ridiculous
Get Him to the Greek is worth seeing for one extended Las Vegas sequence that reaches Marx Bros. levels of lunacy
Bunny and the Bull features a small cast of characters interacting with a backdrop of paper cutouts, still images, and tinker-toy sets
Knight and Day is the latest entry in this year’s popular buddy-action-romantic-comedy genre: a curious hodgepodge of stale plot points
Agora is set in Alexandria at the end of the fourth century A.D., when Christianity overtook other religions
Inception is a masterpiece, brilliant and complex, endlessly fascinating and thought-provoking and profound
Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody is stunningly beautiful to look at, with postcard-perfect cinematography, but also Hellish to sit through
The Rebound an entirely effective and affectionate movie, and one of the best romantic comedies in recent memory
A Single Man immediately identifies director Tom Ford as an auteur with impeccable control over his craft
Shrek Forever After is being touted as the final installment in the Shrek franchise, which feels about right
Letters to Juliet is quite wonderful in that soapy, schmaltzy, teary-eyed Hollywood way
Predators is a ridiculously entertaining ride, a self-knowing but straight-faced throwback to the days of over-the-top 80s machismo and 70s grindhouse films
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is all about sex and lust and teenage infatuation, a lot of it coming from a 109-year-old character that ought to know better
Solomon Kane is a good-enough sword-and-sorcery tale, brutal and moody and atmospheric