Don Jon represents an unusual choice of material for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, making his feature-length writing and directing debut
There’s one sequence any Carrie adaptation/remake needs to nail: the violent prom night climax
Prisoners is at its best when challenging its audience: the lines between right and wrong are continuously blurred
2 Guns doesn’t bring anything new to the table but a fast pace and loose presentation makes this an agreeably fun ride
Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is a real wow, combining ground-breaking space-age f/x with a straightforward B-movie survival plot
Ron Howard’s Rush presents an authentic-feeling re-creation of the 1970s rivalry between Formula 1 drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt
Metallica: Through the Never is an ambitious take on the concert film that frames one of the band’s performances inside of a fictional narrative
Runner Runner aspires to become another Wall Street but the script is so generic and predictable that the film barely manages a pulse
Bernie is a fascinating portrait of both the actual events in the case and the small-town insider’s view that led to Bernie’s martyrdom
Springsteen and I is at its most fascinating when telling the actual stories of the people who got up there on stage
Diana charts Lady Di’s little-publicized love affair with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan during the final years of her life
The Best Offer slowly draws you in to its serpentine story before carefully peeling back the layers
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is as disheveled and confusing as its unwieldy title might imply
Riddick, a modest-budgeted ($38 million) sequel with straightforward plotting, delivers the genre goods just like a 1950s sci-fi quickie
One Direction: This Is Us purports to tell the story of the record-setting UK boy band cobbled together from X-Factor contestants
Elysium is a whole lotta fun until a third act that gets a little too serious as it descends into the usual-usual
We’re the Millers is predictable and formulaic to a hilt, but also has a goofy, likable streak that leaves a smile across your face
Kick-Ass 2 revels in over-the-top brutality; by the big action-packed finale, it has become the kind of superhero movie it originally set out to parody
Ashton Kutcher is Apple founder Steve Jobs in director Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs, a standard-order biopic that focuses on the early days of Apple
James DeMonaco’s The Purge starts out with an idiotic, far-fetched premise and continues to stretch our credibility
A plotless, pointless, laughless collection of desperate lowbrow gags in the guise of a coherent film, Grown Ups 2 must be seen to be believed
The Congress is a dense, heady little piece of science fiction from the director of the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir
Pain & Gain is a nasty, inherently unlikable little piece of work that distances itself from its audience through both style and content
Lovelace is a biography of Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace from directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Howl)