Tedious, lifeless, dreary, annoying, a really difficult watch. Avoid at all costs.

I'll get the obvious stuff out of the way -- the premise is stupid and the movie knows that it's stupid. You wonder if it'll be anything more than a one-joke movie. Well, sort of. I thought parts of it were really funny - I love Craig Robinson in pretty much anything, Rob Corddry is insane, Crispin Glover's every moment on screen cracked me up. Then there are moments where the jokes and situations are predictable and there's a weird flat energy. But even when some of it doesn't work, it redeems itself over and over with memorable lines.

Liked all the performances and thought it was well-directed, taut and suspenseful throughout. The ending was really clever too. I actually loved that it escalated quickly because I was sure in the beginning that it would slowly lead to the big twist that Olyphant's character figured out in the first 15 or 20 minutes. Allowed the movie to explore more ideas. My only gripes were the usual dumb horror character moves -- "stay here while I go explore..", etc.

Obviously the twist and the entire plot is telegraphed from the first frame of the film. But this is about the characters and the atmosphere, so that doesn't matter.. right? Well, here's a thought: if the twist is irrelevant, don't shoot your movie in the ambiguous, duplicitous, sleight-of-hand style that makes you seem like you're unsure of the source material.

The dream sequences were distracting and dull. The acting was all very mediocre -- even DiCaprio, who I've always thought of as a great, underrated actor, does the same brow-furrowing, paranoid, unstable character from 'The Departed'. It's like his range goes from 'coked up' to 'extremely coked up'. The ending goes on forever.

None of it was thrilling and even in the lone decent scene involving Jackie Earle Haley, every struck match sounds like a thunderstorm. The score is one of the worst major motion picture scores I've heard in ages. Like everything else in this film - it's derivative, deafening, atrocious.

Someone seeing the "So you sleep with your mother?" clips might be misled. There's an incestuous vibe here but it is buried well underneath the surface. Do-Joon's mother worries about his 'virility', but her love for him - while smothering and obsessive - is maternal. He's a slow-witted boy who is suspected of a crime and she becomes increasingly desperate and hysterical as she tries to clear his name...[more]...

Andrea Arnold combines kitchen sink realism with dashes of Terrence Malick-like scenes of immense beauty. When Mia allows herself to feel, time slows down and sounds and smells and sensations are amplified. She dances and listens to angry rappers because that's what she relates to, but she knows that she's not meant for greater things.

The film both upholds some expectations of what's to come and surprises you with a refreshing lack of missteps and cliches. It doesn't paint a grimy gritty picture of high-rise, low-income Britain, nor does it make poverty beautiful. It is what it is. Unlike the films of the Dardennes and their imitators, when Mia walks, she walks with a purpose. Intense realism doesn't have to mean a focus on the mundane. There is life and energy to every frame here.

Michael Fassbender is once again amazing as Connor. You understand when Connor comes into her mother's life, why Mia pushes him away like she does everyone else but is also attracted to him. The real find is the phenomenal Katie Jarvis as Mia, who storms through every scene in this movie without a lick of conceit. In a world where Jenny from An Education - a rich spoiled brat who dreams of an existence more pretentious than the one she already has - is lauded as a strong female character, here is someone worthy of your attention.

A lot like the "Professor Layton and the Curious Village" game for the DS come to life. Ewan McGregor goes around talking to different people on a small island and getting clues. It's actually a great premise for a movie and the mystery is engaging. But there's a reveal that comes 20 minutes or so before the end of the film and then another reveal in the last 5 minutes that frankly seems redundant. The latter reveal is meant to be the shocking one but it doesn't leave any impact. I don't think Polanski quite got the mystery right even though it could have been made in such a way that it would be a fantastic thriller.

It's almost as if he's more interested in the way certain scenes are shot (a brilliant car chase scene, a storm gathering on the island) rather than the meat of the story. There's also some poor acting on the part of Kim Cattrall and some bizarre dubbing whereby clear expletives are replaced with "freaking" and "sodding" like a bad TV edit. Maybe the budget ran too high and they thought a PG-13 rating would cause more people to see it. It's an unsatisfying film, but worth watching. I'm torn on whether the last shot is haunting or cheesy.

The first moral dilemma has some real world ramifications, although it's a stretch and I think Richard Kelly is far too stupid to have thought of that. Would you make a decision that would benefit you but harm somebody you don't know? Even the explanation for why the Frank Langella character is doing this is somewhat interesting. But the way Kelly goes about this is so laughable. There is nothing remotely unsettling about any of this; just really really silly. James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are completely out of their fucking element. It gets more absurd while continuing to be very dull and slow. And then the other moral dilemma that comes in the last 20 minutes is so dumb, it reminded me of middle school conundrums you'd present your friends about who they'd kill - their mother or father - and they absolutely had to pick one. It makes no sense and the sympathy the director is trying to draw from this nonsensical circumstance is pathetic. Goofiest movie of the year.

Jason Reitman did not get enough credit for his direction on Juno. The buzz was mostly about Ellen Page's performance or the love/hate for Diablo Cody's script. That movie looked really good and he did a solid job of getting excellent performances from his actors...[more]...

I was not a fan of the book. I thought it was plodding and McCarthy's repetitive prose and strange grammatical style really bothered me. So I was dreading the pace of this movie a lot. From all the whinging coming out of TIFF, you'd think this was a dull 2 hour meander.

It is in fact, a singular and uncompromising vision from John Hillcoat. Viggo Mortensen is staggering and there aren't enough superlatives for his work. Kodi Smit-McPhee makes the annoying little shit in the book into a complex, realistic, frightened young boy. Robert Duvall and Michael K. Williams (Omar!) are phenomenal in their small roles. The look of these characters, as well as the desolate wastelands of the setting, is an astonishing achievement. You really believe life and destruction has taken a toll on these characters and on the landscape.

It's a movie about grief, instinct, loss, survival, and compassion for your fellow human. Why be good in a world when there's seemingly no reason to do so? How many movies actually go so far as to ask that question? The dialogue, particularly in the Duvall and Williams scenes, is some of the most powerful I've heard in ages. The narration is similar to the kind used in The Thin Red Line. It's comtemplative rather than expository and utterly enthralling just like the rest of the movie. Best of the year.

I couldn't even say that this film is his best since whatever, since I love all of Wes Anderson's works and each movie of his is unique and brilliant in its own way.

The animation in this one, a combination of miniatures and stop-motion, is stunning and it's amazing that he gets more expression and emotion out of puppets than Robert Zemeckis gets with hundreds of millions of dollars in motion-capture. The look of tears on fox fur is especially beautiful.

Anderson's trademark wide angle shots are perfectly suited for capturing the shots of three farms from a distance or when he zooms out, an entire maze of fox holes. He also uses cross-sections a lot, just like with the Belafonte in The Life Aquatic and it's a wonderful technique. Music plays a key role as in all his films, and the songs and score are perfect, particularly when there is devious plotting or digging to be done.

The characters are charming creations and Anderson infuses them with life, thanks to the attention to detail in the animation and remarkable voice work. There is talk of existentialism and the struggle between staying civilized and succumbing to animal instincts, but I felt this movie was really about how we often settle for mediocrity and each of us can bring something different to this world. Roald Dahl would be proud.

Extremely surreal kids movie with lots of really funny gags that go by at a lightning pace. It's well aware of itself, there is a lack of pop-culture jokes and the runtime is short. Trippy, colorful, strangely moving and a very breezy, fun watch.

This is one ugly looking movie, partly to compliment the lead character's drab existence and partly because I imagine the budget was miniscule. Whereas Siegel's script for The Wrestler had more cliches and also focused on a lonely loser, it benefited a ton from Darren Aronofsky's brilliant direction and Mickey Rourke's performance made the character easy to relate to and root for...[more]...

Spectacularly rich, gorgeous to look at, incredibly smart and layered in its themes, and evoking (good and bad) feelings of childhood unlike any other movie I've seen in ages. Just thoroughly captivating and beautiful all the way through.

I thought it was a very effective horror movie. Very simple things like lights going on and off and creaking of staircases go a long way to be really creepy. I wish more traditional horror movie makers would learn that a lack of score during boo! scares is much more unnerving, although movies like this and [REC] have a reason for the silence. The coolest moments for me were when the woman is standing by her bedside and the clock on the bottom right fast forwards through a couple of hours. There were a couple of things I didn't enjoy like the opening and end titles trying to sell this as a true story. But knowing its origins and budget, they could not have anticipated this getting such hype and a wide release, so they must have felt the campaign would be more intriguing this way. There was also the very last shot that was a bit 'eh' and I would have liked for it to have cut out unexpectedly or something. It's not the scariest movie ever, or even one of, but thoroughly enjoyable for what it is.

The two central characters played by John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are unique in that they undergo little change through the course of the course of the movie and so there's no cloying journey capped by a lesson learned. However, in all other ways this movie is insufferable and boring. The many vignettes where we meet different married couples for about 15 or 20 minutes - all feel precious and haphazard and the supporting characters are all whiny, self-centered, and completely unrealistic. I'm a fan of Mendes, but he really doesn't put any thought into the direction because I certainly didn't feel any connection with anyone in this film. And he punctuates just about every scene with a Nick Drake-esque acoustic guitar song that sounds like Zach Braff chose the soundtrack. A smug and dull waste of time.