There are dreams that cannot be, there are storms we cannot weather, and there are films—like Les Misérables—we simply cannot endure.

It's estimated that a quarter of a million people lost their lives in the South Asian Tsunami: so why the fuck do I care about a family of wealthy European tourists who survived?

With a spare, ruthlessly precise screenplay, powerful and devastating performances, and a rigorous, uncompromising eye, Amour is a nearly flawless piece of filmmaking.

Hyde Park on Hudson is not an exposé, a love story, or a history lesson: it is too shallow, too flimsy, too cynically and dishonestly sleazy to be any of these things. And so I am left to believe that its sole purpose is to be a light and frothy comedy, divorced from reality, dressed up in period clothing, designed merely to provide some laughs and pass the time pleasantly. Unfortunately, by even these very minimal standards, it also fails horribly…

Spoiler Level: Safe I should probably begin by specifying which version of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey I'm reviewing, since there are currently

Finely acted, frequently funny, and stylishly directed, Killing Them Softly nonetheless ultimately fails to satisfy: its story is too slight, its characters are too familiar, and its stakes are too small. The talent involved in this film might have produced a modern classic, but Killing Them Softly ultimately amounts to little more than a minor diversion.

With a dark, indy-drama setup that somehow resolves into a phony, crowd-pleasing romantic comedy, Silver Linings Playbook feels like a movie at war with itself.

Ultimately, there is not a single moment in the tame, tepid Hitchcock that would not be better spent watching a single moment—any moment—of one of Hitchcock's films.

Life of PI is a beautiful, moving film that restores our faith in stories even as it reminds us that any good story is, itself, an act of faith.

It's not Tolstoy's sprawling, staggering epic: no film could be. What Wright has made instead is something clever, creative, and often breathtakingly beautiful. It might offend the literary purists, but it can stand proudly on its own as one of the best films of the year.

Respectful without being insightful, well-crafted but without creativity, and visually impressive without any real vision, Lincoln represents an impressive panoply of talent coming together to create the cinematic equivalent of a B+ term paper in AP History.

There will always be an England, no matter how its power waxes and wanes, and so there will always be a Bond, who will be reborn periodically with a new face, a slightly new sensibility, and a reliable fondness for strong women and weak martinis.

Wreck-It Ralph builds a marvelous world, but its characters are never quite real enough, or rounded enough, to make the dream come alive.

The Master is a movie in which nearly everything works, and yet, at the end of its 150 minutes, one feels that all of this excellence—the careful direction, the lovely cinematography, the fine performances—has been in the service of something vague and forgettable.

There is little we haven't seen before in Looper, but the skill and care director Rian Johnson brings to it makes it all feel fresh and original. Appropriate for a time-travel movie, Johnson makes the old seem new again.