When it comes to big and loud, this is the movie to beat for at least this week; what makes it entertaining is its unabashed wallow in these qualities ...

No go, "Joe."

Retaliation is less a sequel than an antidote to the calcified mound of crap that ostensibly inspired it.

It captures the wonder (and more gently, the anxiety) of discovery time and time again. And the filmmakers have a hoot playing with the Croods' encounters with, as well as their misunderstandings of, all things new.

As family viewing, it's pleasant enough: primitive, yes, but in a digitally sophisticated way that's boisterous, funny and will no doubt sell a lot of toys.

The animation is first-rate, with moments of genuine visual imagination, and the story, while unremarkable, is entirely adequate.

What is most distressing about Admission is that it serves as further evidence that Tina Fey, despite her dominance of the small screen, has not yet mastered the big one.

This is certainly an interesting idea, though the movie is badly handicapped by Fey, who must venture beyond her usual snippiness into scenes of genuine poignancy and proves unequal to the task.

Granted, this is not automatic laugh-riot material, nor should it be, but didn't Fey recognize how hackneyed it all is?

The carnage is cruel and crude.

'Olympus Has Fallen is just too much of a pale 'Die Hard' ripoff.

... the action is often not unengaging, and Butler's better at swinging for faux Bruce Willis ...

This comedy about a magician who must hit bottom before rising again to the wonder of his beloved craft pulls plenty of sweet moments and a slew of laughs out of a story that might have been thin air.

A generic, fitfully funny mainstream comedy that doesn't nearly get the best from its name-brand players but doesn't qualify as a desecration, either.

A veritable festival of bad toupees and repeated gags that just lie there, "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone'' runs a bit more than an hour and a half but seems much longer - like it had been edited down at the last minute.

If you're going to watch a movie in which two people talk on the phone for most of the film, it's not the worst thing in the world for one of the folks involved to have the face of Storm from the X-Men.

This is as brain-dead as a movie can be and it assumes the audience will have the I.Q. of a rutabaga.

It's a lot better than you might expect a movie like this to be.

Basically a "Girls Gone Wild'' short artily padded out to feature-length by endlessly repeating the same scenes and lines of dialogue, often three or more times.

"Spring Breakers" is so over-the-top, so-overdone, so extreme, it'd turn even a hedonist off sex.

Spring Breakers is an exploitative display of bacchanalian excess, casual sex and rampant nudity that's more tedious than titillating.

Absent any emotional grounding, the film is a gorgeous, sterile construction, like a dream city unoccupied by humans.

It doesn't really develop its story, or its themes. It doesn't truly draw out its characters. It evokes no serious emotions. It has - in the end - no gravity.

"Upside Down" is such a gorgeous wreck that I could almost sense Terry Gilliam somewhere muttering, "Wait a minute, I should have been the one to screw up this idea."

An imaginative mix of live-action and CGI that pays homage to the iconic images and timeless sense of wonder in the classic The Wizard of Oz without being too deferential.

Oz the Great and Powerful is entirely serviceable family entertainment. Problem is, serviceable doesn't quite cut it when you're talking about the magical land of Oz.

Aside from a trio of witches that can hold its own with Eastwick's in the dishiness department, Oz the Great and Powerful is a peculiarly joyless occasion.

Explores a common ground for noir thrillers before stumbling and imploding in a climax that feels like it might have been hijacked from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

While a mob thriller can be as nasty as it likes, what it can't be is silly.

This blend of Scandinavian gloom and Hollywood hokum never jells.