Movie Reviews

'Man of Steel" does things that are un-American. Un-Kryptonian, even.

The lads of Hollywood's "Pot Pack" get together for a riotous riff on the Rapture in "This Is the End," an often hilarious, generally irreverent comedy about the biblical apocalypse as seen through the windows of a movie star's mansion.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

James DeMonaco's "The Purge" is a bloody-minded, heavy-handed satire of life within these violent United States. It's a horror film with the occasional visceral thrill – the fear of being hunted, the excitement of righteous violence against nameless intruders. But mostly, it's just a clumsy lecture about who we're becoming: haves vs. have-nots, with the haves armed to the teeth.

Family histories usually only fascinate members of the families involved. Unless your great-grandfather was, say, Woodrow Wilson, your Ancestry.com search will inspire the same level of interest in friends as your vacation photos.

There are really three movie stars headlining "The Internship": Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Google. Actually, it's a surprise Google doesn't get top billing over the humans, so adoringly is the company displayed.

A celebration of cinema, New York City and the distinctive charms of actress Greta Gerwig, "Frances Ha" was co-written by Gerwig and its director, Noah Baumbach, and it's the best film either has made.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

There's a great movie out now about magicians, sleight-of-hand maestros, illusionists, card and coin tricksters.

Truth be told, "After Earth" wouldn't exist had Will Smith not cooked it up as yet another star vehicle for his son, Jaden. But since buying your kid a movie credit is a tradition that dates back to the beginnings of Hollywood, you can't hold that against it.

The message behind most romantic comedies is the simple-minded sentiment that love is all you need. So when Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier takes that title for a departure from somber drama to romance, you might expect her to deliver it with some serious irony.

Bad movies are rarely as much fun as these "Fast and the Furious" pictures. And make no mistake about it – they're bad.

There's a double meaning to the title of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," filmmaker Mira Nair's gripping and complex drama based on the 2007 novel by Mohsin Hamid on the roots of extremism.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

"Parker" (R, 118 minutes, Sony): Parker, the antihero of Taylor Hackford's serviceable action thriller, is an odd duck.

In calling itself "Epic," the new CGI adventure based on children's author-illustrator William Joyce's "The Leaf Men" might be guilty of overselling itself, just a bit.

"Daring" isn't a word you would use very much to describe 2011's "The Hangover Part II," the disappointingly lazy, beat-for-beat rehash of the wild and wildly successful original "Hangover" from 2009.

The nervy reboot of the "Star Trek" franchise by action impresario J.J. Abrams can be summed up, quite simply, as a triumph of casting.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

The 38-year-old filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has emerged as one of the most exciting artists on the cinema scene in recent years, with his mesmerizing debut film "Man Push Cart" and then with "Chop Shop" and "Goodbye Solo."

In "The Iceman," Michael Shannon's mesmerizing portrayal of Richard Kuklinski, a notorious contract killer, has the paradoxical quality, peculiar to many great screen performances, of being unreadable and transparent.

'Kon-Tiki" needed to be made for the simple reason that the world needs to remember that real scientific adventure existed long before George Lucas dreamed up Indiana Jones.

"Peeples" is an African American "Meet the Parents" that slips funnyman Craig Robinson into the Ben Stiller role.

Beneath Baz Luhrmann's extravagantly hassled "The Great Gatsby" lies a great American novel filled with genuine feeling.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

Title characters Ginger and Rosa are best friends.

Shane Carruth made his name in the independent film world in 2004 with his debut, "Primer," a sci-fi, time-travel thriller that he wrote, directed, produced, edited, scored and starred in for a paltry sum of $7,000.

We unplug our phone from the charger, pop in our earbuds and go out to seize the day. We text compulsively, post on Facebook obsessively, and when it comes time to shop, date or hook up, we log on, boot up and tune out.

"Iron Man 3" finds new and refreshing ways to present Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the billionaire industrialist, incorrigible quipper and wearer of all-flying, all-knowing Iron Man suits.

Lots of people want to escape their past. Wallace Avery wants to escape his present.

"The Company You Keep" is packaged as a political drama, but at heart it's a preachy nostalgia tour of Vietnam-era liberal doctrine.

"Marriage is like a phone call late at night," Robert De Niro says, in dulcet voiceover mode, at the outset of "The Big Wedding." "First comes the ring, and then you wake up.

Matthew McConaughey has been on an extraordinary run of late, turning an impressively versatile hat trick in "Bernie," "Magic Mike" and "Killer Joe" while proving that, rather than the tabloid punch line or rom-com sellout he seemed destined to be at one time, the boy with the bedroom eyes and bong-hit grin is a real actor, after all.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

The most important thing you need to know about the action comedy "Pain & Gain" is not that it's a Mark Wahlberg movie or a Dwayne Johnson movie, or even that it's inspired by real events.

Early in the sleek sci-fi thriller "Oblivion," Tom Cruise, as a flyboy repairman living a removed existence above an invaded and deserted Earth, intones his home sickness.

'The Sapphires" is an unpolished gem of a musical, a dramedy with a familiar '60s girl-group-on-the-rise story over a backdrop of Australian racism and America's long war in Vietnam.

The first rule of any baseball movie is that the guys cast to star in it have to look like they can play. And in "Home Run," Scott Elrod has the build, the swagger and the sweet swing of a big leaguer. That makes him and this thin tale of 12-step redemption credible and watchable, if nothing else.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.

Jackie Robinson has long been an elusive presence in contemporary American cinema, as filmmakers tried and failed to bring his life story to the screen. Brian Helgeland has finally succeeded in "42," a stirring, straightforward and ultimately soaring portrayal of Robinson's historic entry into major league baseball in 1947.

The heist picture gets a few Danny Boyle head-game twists in "Trance," a movie about memory, the mind and manipulating both to find some "lost" stolen art.

The protagonist of "Lore," a powerful and haunting drama set in Germany immediately after the country's defeat in World War II, is a teenage girl.

"The Place Beyond the Pines" announces its great ambition with its first scene. It consists of a single, unbroken shot that follows carnival motorcycle trick rider Luke (Ryan Gosling) from his trailer, through the midway, onto his motorcycle and into a wire "globe-of-death" cage where he and other riders race around the confined quarters and defy gravity.

Depending on your generational vantage point, Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel "On the Road" was the defining literary event of its generation or, as Truman Capote famously observed, "just typing."

Sam Raimi's 1981 indie-horror classic "The Evil Dead" and its smarter, cooler followup, "Evil Dead II" from 1987, are the Rosetta Stone for the hack-and-splatter crowd.

In the future, hunger, violence and money have disappeared. Lying is unthinkable. And stealing – from the place where one acquires one's every need, a building labeled "Store" – is pointless.

A better-than-average gravity-defying ninja duel leads to an epic chase – by leaps, swings and ziplines – through the Himalayas in the big set piece sequence of "G.I. Joe: Retaliation." Masked villains in red ninja suits chase Snake Eyes and Jinx as they attempt to spirit a ninja villain out of a mountaintop lair. They scamper, by rope, across impossible slopes, swinging their swords.

Current films are reviewed each week to provide parents a guide to decide what may be appropriate to younger viewers.