Movie Reviews

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.

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.

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.

Part political procedural, part seamlessly re-created time capsule, Pablo Larrain's "No" revisits Chile in 1988, when brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet – under pressure from the international community – held a plebiscite on his leadership, which he had seized in a coup in 1973.

Skip past the lame title and weary Stone Age premise. "The Croods" is the first pleasant surprise of spring, a gorgeous kids cartoon with heart and wit, if not exactly a firm grasp of paleontology.

Youth-gone-wild provocateur Harmony Korine pushes booze-and-bikini hedonism to the extreme in "Spring Breakers," a film that grabs attention but is about as deep as a Florida motel Jacuzzi.

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

For those who thought the last Bruce Willis movie was a little light on the casualty list, "Olympus Has Fallen" arrives toting the biggest body count since "Die Hard II."

Tina Fey visibly loses confidence as her romantic comedy "Admission" progresses. She lets Liz Lemon wackiness overwhelm more interesting instincts in playing what could have been her most substantive film character yet.

The only incredible thing about "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" is the way it makes Steve Carell so thoroughly and irreparably unlikable. In a film about magic tricks, this is the most difficult feat of all.

It's a tossup which of these perfectly crafted bits of patter in the unwitting gangland noir parody "Dead Man Down" takes the cake for over-the-top irrelevance.

The funny, warm-hearted "Wizard of Oz" prequel "Oz the Great and Powerful" veers far enough from the Yellow Brick Road paved by the original film to avoid dangerous direct comparisons.

Seven years after "An Inconvenient Truth," what has changed in the world's efforts to come to grips with global warming? The scientific consensus has firmed up, even further. Public opinion has, at last, fallen in line with the science, assisted by any number of in-your-face extreme weather events – epic droughts, record ice melts, multiple applications of the phrase "storm of the century."

"Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs," Charles Dickens opined. And while the six men in Dror Moreh's haunting and daunting documentary "The Gatekeepers" have gray hair – or no hair at all – theirs are not the simple regrets of spent youth.

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

Hirohito sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne through the Japanese invasion of China, the attack on Pearl Harbor and all through World War II. But at the end of the war, there were two emperors in Tokyo. Gen. Douglas MacArthur ruled Japan as a potentate, overseeing reforms that turned the country away from militarism and feudalism and setting the stage for Japan's ascent as an economic superpower.

If you've signed a petition in the past seven days expressing outrage at the Oscar-night political incorrectness of Seth MacFarlane, stay far, far away from "21 and Over." It might be best to avoid multiplexes altogether for the next two to four weeks, on the chance that you mix up theaters after a bathroom break and walk in when our heroes trick two pledges at an all-Latina sorority into making out with each other.

A big-budget, effects-laden, 3-D retelling of the Jack and the Beanstalk legend may seem like the unlikeliest pairing yet of director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie, but "Jack the Giant Slayer" ends up being smart, thrilling and a whole lot of fun.

On the heels of a year in which an amazing number of movies portrayed American military, intelligence and political processes without an ounce of cynicism, where can a filmmaker turn for refreshed inspiration? Russia, of course!

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

"Bless Me, Ultima," the film based on Rudolfo Anaya's landmark Chicano novel, is a meticulously observed time capsule, a vivid re- creation of a self-contained world of Mexican-Americans in 1944 New Mexico.

The saga of the "West Memphis Three" reaches a thrilling if somewhat anticlimactic conclusion in "West of Memphis," a documentary financed by Peter ("Lord of the Rings") Jackson and directed by Amy Berg.

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

It takes forever to get going, and lollygags even after that.

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

Young love, so sorely tested by vampirism and zombification in "Twilight" and "Warm Bodies," finds the road to romance sunnier in "Beautiful Creatures," in which two teens pair up despite the fact that one of them is a witch in training.

The Nicholas Sparks universe finally gets the crime thriller it deserves, an erratic amalgam of mush and mystery, with an 11th-hour dose of supernatural visitation.

Yeah, Happy Valentine's Day, Mother Russia.

Steven Soderbergh, rightly considered one of Hollywood's smartest movie makers, is at his cleverest in "Side Effects," a canny, cunning big-idea thriller in a minor key, an engrossing zeitgeist whodunit about Wall Street, Big Pharma, prescription drugs and the power we give psychiatry and psychologists.

"Oooh, honey, less is more," the flamboyant hair stylist whispers, out of earshot, at Diana (Melissa McCarthy) as she bombs her head with hairspray and trowels on the eye shadow.

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

Watching "Stand Up Guys" feels akin to seeing the members of an old, favorite rock band getting back together for one last gig after decades apart.

Choppy and bordering on incoherent, "Bullet to the Head" is Sylvester Stallone's answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The Last Stand," an action exercise in "Here's how we used to do it."

Imagine a "Twilight" in which the panting, flirting teens were in on the joke, where the gulf between them was more about communication skills than supernatural schisms.

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

"Amour" is a must-see film that not everyone must see, at least right now.

"Parker" roars into a dull January and enlivens the movie landscape, and thank the action-movie gods because we needed a little something to wake us from our winter slumber.

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

An R-rated horror action comedy fairy tale – how's that for genre bending? "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" is more Gatling guns and grenades than the Brothers Grimm. It takes the kidnapped kiddies into adulthood, where they've parlayed their fame at cooking a witch's goose into a business. Got a witch problem? Call H&G – the extermination experts.

"The Last Stand" is the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie you didn't realize you wanted to see.

"Mama" breaks a lot of horror movie rules, right off the proverbial bat.

It's a filthy place, this "Broken City." Even the people called "good guys" have their dark sides, their dirty secrets and tragic flaws.

"Zero Dark Thirty" shows guts in taking on loaded subject matter and filmmaking confidence and skill in not telling us how we should feel about it.

The Old West died hard in the City of Angels. And in the years after World War II, battle-hardened veterans came home to a town "under enemy occupation," when the only way to fight off the mob was with a six-gun, your two fists and the right hat.

Merely the premise of "Rust and Bone" sounds uncomfortably maudlin: A wayward single father and part-time fighter falls into an unexpected romance with a beautiful whale trainer who's just lost both her legs below the knee in a freak accident.

It's a good sign, in compiling a list of the best movies in a year, when 10 immediately spring to mind.

"Promised Land" is an engaging and entertaining – if preachy – look at Big Energy and fracking – the land-and-water-wrecking practice of drilling and pumping water and chemicals into the ground to extract natural gas from shale.

As drummer in a forgotten New Jersey band in the 1960s, David Chase never got close – never even got close to close – to making it in music. Yet from a sound check of his rock-infused HBO series "The Sopranos," it's clear the music never faded away.