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As voiced by Dwayne "the artist formerly known as The Rock" Johnson, astronaut Chuck Baker is the paragon of all-American achievement -- that is, until he conquers a far off world with an unexpected population, one inexplicably steeped in our '50s-era culture and terrified by the prospect of an alien invader in human form. More unfortunately for us, Chuck has landed smack-dab in the middle of Planet 51, a short-sighted assembly of sci-fi references and scatalogical humor that should nonetheless placate undemanding tots and, by extension, their undiscerning parents for ninety minutes or so.

The trailers for The Blind Side triggered my "oh geez, another sports-related Triumph of the Human Spirit" cynicism, and I might not have seen the film at all if I hadn't been assigned to review it. That would have been my loss, and I experienced the lovely surprise of having a movie turn out far more enjoyable than I expected. The Blind Side has no twists or gimmicks other than being a very good example of a sports-related family film, with quality performances and writing.

The movie's title is a football reference, which the voiceover of Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) explains at the beginning. Michael Oher (Quenton Aaron) is sweating out a tough but unspecified situation in an office, when we flash back a few years and meet him as Big Mike. An African-American staff member at a mostly white Christian private school is trying to get his athletic son into the school, and the school's coach also spots some athletic potential in Big Mike, granting him a scholarship. Big Mike has terrible trouble keeping up in school, and when his friend's family stops helping him out, he is virtually homeless -- sleeping in the school gym, eating popcorn left there after events, wearing the same thin clothes daily.

Even the most egocentric or self-important film critic realizes that his opinions and insights aren't going to be agreed with or respected by everyone, but movies like New Moon offer a special challenge in both honesty and humility. Like with any other beloved literary franchise brought to the silver screen, there's already an impassioned fan base eager to see it realized regardless of its quality, and there's also an inherent distrust among them of nonfans who will eventually be analyzing the object of their affection. In which case, a critic must not only manage his own response to the film, perhaps filtering it through some designated demographic or specific audience that's potentially different than him, but gauge the reaction he'll get when he puts pen to paper, if only to be aware of the relevance of his reaction to what the filmmakers were trying to achieve and what those fans really want. Even if he's also got to be completely honest and unmerciful, too.

By virtually all technical measures, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is a superior effort to its predecessor – well-shot, efficiently told, and by all accounts faithful in tone and execution to its source material. But what filmmaker Chris Weitz makes up for in directorial proficiency he lacks in conveying emotional authenticity, which is why it fulfills the expectations of fans and followers of the franchise but nevertheless still falls short of forming something transcendent and meaningful to everyone else.

By Jette Kernion (reprint from 3/17/09 -- SXSW Film Festival)

I'm wary of movies that try to be instant cult/camp classics, with intentionally overdone dialogue and outrageous costumes and actors who are metaphorically winking or even non-metaphorically mugging for the camera. When the characters are in on the joke, it isn't all that funny. And when I learned that the writer-director of Women in Trouble also co-wrote Snakes on a Plane, I grew even more skeptical. But the actresses who populate Women in Trouble tend to play it straight, even when they're wearing assless spandex pants or smoking invisible cigarettes, and that's what keeps this film fun instead of tiresome.

Women in Trouble has a multi-story, anthology-like structure. Writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez said before the SXSW screening that he originally had one ten-page sequence that he wanted to shoot, then thought it might be easy to shoot several of them, all with different actresses, to make a good movie quickly. Apparently it wasn't all that easy, but the result is a large cast of mostly actresses playing a variety of the traditional exploitation "women in trouble." These include porn stars, tag-team hookers (one in a Catholic school uniform, natch), stewardesses (they're not flight attendants when we're poking fun at the exploitation genre), unmarried-and-pregnant women, and a very understanding masseuse.

By Todd Gilchrist (reprint from 11/3/09 -- AFI Film Festival)

It's not hard to like any movie that uses the Beach Boys' music, but Wes Anderson makes it especially easy. As Hollywood's foremost purveyor of hipster drama, his pedigree as a reliable selector of appropriately wistful, poignant and all-around unforgettable songs is virtually unrivaled, but Fantastic Mr. Fox exceeds even the work of his earlier films, using "Heroes and Villains," and later, "I Get Around" as populist punctuation that manages to be both specifically relevant and substantively rousing.

As an animated opus, the film is by necessity his most controlled to date, a painstakingly-designed dollhouse where he no longer controls just the music, sets, and costumes, but the performers themselves. Ironically, however, it feels like his loosest as well - a gloriously unwieldy comedy of manners submerged in the minutiae of Anderson's madcap creativity. All of which makes Fantastic Mr. Fox a celebration both of its stop-motion medium and Anderson's aesthetic, while still managing to fully document the spectacular fun in original author Roald Dahl's daffy, distinctive imagination.

Tethered to reality by only a slender thread, Pirate Radio quickly cuts loose and floats off into its own imaginary layer of the Earth's atmosphere, where only good-hearted, pleasant-thinking, die-hard romantics can survive. Welcome home, Richard Curtis, where have you been?

Writer/director Curtis rose to fame on the basis of his screenplay for Four Weddings and a Funeral, featuring an ensemble of quirky yet appealing men and women chasing love and happiness, followed, notably, by his script for Notting Hill, but he's been writing off-kilter comedy sketches and episodic television for many years. Pirate Radio proves that his gift for writing witty one-liners and creating funny situations remains intact. His skills as a film director and shaper of material are a little more fuzzy and undefined, however.

As with Love, Actually, his previous directorial effort, Pirate Radio (AKA The Boat That Rocked) is filled with episodes that feel randomly assembled, knit together by proximity and happenstance more than narrative necessity. For all the laughter and positive feelings that Pirate Radio generates, it's a lightweight treatment of a potentially heavyweight subject.

The most common retort one gets when talking negatively of a film clearly intended to be consumed with a tub of popcorn and a brain switch in the off position is "Why can't you just enjoy the movie?" And I get that. I am the kind of viewer who can absolutely just sit back and let sights and sounds wash over them. But what some fail to understand is that even with the brain turned off, even with disbelief firmly suspended, some movies stink so ferociously that the stench wafts off of the screen, snapping even the most resistant critic to full alertness like a slap in the face by a glove spiked with smelling salts.

2012 is not immune to analysis simply because it is an openly absurd movie. Sure, it's about the end of the world taking place three years from now. Sure, it features some astounding special effects. Sure, it is in every way, shape, and form a popcorn tub movie. And sure, you know from the trailer alone whether or not you're game for yet another disaster porn movie from The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day director Roland Emmerich. But what the willing don't inherently know, and this is the most crucial piece of information one can be equipped with before hand, is that 2012 is 158 minutes long.

Granted, one would expect the end of the world to take more than 90 minutes, but the biggest failing of 2012 is that it barely has enough story to span half an hour, yet alone two more beyond that. Sign up for all the California-sinking, supervolcano-erupting mayhem you want, but what you're signing up for comes packaged with banal, one-dimensional characters who are only ever allowed to spew groan-inducing dialogue like so many fireballs from a, well, supervolcano. And considering the spectacle is unfortunately a fraction of the length, the audience is given more than enough time to wonder how so much mediocrity came to be from such talented people.

Just when movies about the war in Iraq had exhausted audience interest, this summer's sleeper hit The Hurt Locker came along. And just when those same audiences thought there was only one movie about Iraq that could resonate with them, The Messenger comes along. Starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton, the film is not only a revelatory look at the war's logistical repercussions stateside, but an examination of the emotional toll not only battle but survival takes on soldiers, culminating in a poignant tale of redemption that counts as one of the very best films of the year.

Foster (3:10 To Yuma) plays Will Montgomery, a staff sergeant more or less waiting out his last days as a military officer after an extended tour of duty in Iraq. Although he initially (and understandably) reluctant to participate when he is enlisted to inform families of the deaths of their loved ones, he bonds with his superior officer, Tony Stone (Harrelson), and slowly emerges from his own emotional morass as a result of reaching out to these grieving families. But when he and Tony inform a mother named Olivia (Morton) of her husband's death, he becomes inextricably involved in her and her son's life, realizing that the tenuous relationships he previously participated in are no substitute for something more meaningful.

We're told at the beginning of The Men Who Stare at Goats that "more of this is true than you would believe." But the story of the U.S. Army's attempts to harness psychic powers to create super-soldiers is so bizarre it almost HAS to be true, in accordance with the "how could anyone make this up?" principle. In fact, I believe more of this admittedly fictionalized story than I do of The Fourth Kind, which claims to be 100 percent true. Surely there's a lesson in there.

Based on Jon Ronson's nonfiction book, The Men Who Stare at Goats stars Ewan McGregor as Bob Wilton, a journalist covering the Iraq War in 2003. Bob meets a man named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a private contractor with an unusual past: He claims to have worked for the government as a psychic spy. Bob once met a man, back home in Michigan (played by Stephen Root), who made the same claims, and who named Lyn Cassady as one of his colleagues.

You can see why the military would be interested in psychic spying. Surveillance is a lot less dangerous when you can do it entirely with your mind, rather than having to actually sneak up and eavesdrop on people. And if we could harness things like telekinesis, well, forget about it! We'd beat the Russkies for sure!

By Eric D. Snider (reprint from 1/19/09 -- Sundance Film Festival)

The premise of Precious is so unsettling and bleak that no one would blame you if you didn't want to see it: It's the story of an obese 16-year-old illiterate Harlem girl who's pregnant (for the second time) by her own father, lives with her monstrously abusive mother, and has almost given up on life. But if you do see it, you'll find that it's compelling and artistic, punctuated with warm humor and masterful performances, and ultimately triumphant and hopeful.

The girl is named Claireece "Precious" Jones (she goes by Precious), and she's played with astonishing rawness by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. Narrating the film, Precious tells us the grim facts. Beyond the ones already noted, she is still in junior high school (where she's dumbly in love with her kindly math teacher); her first child, born with Down syndrome, is technically in her mother's custody but is actually cared for by her grandmother; and her mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), is a welfare-absorbing harridan who abuses Precious in every possible way, hating her daughter for "stealing" her man. Precious did no such thing, of course -- she was raped by her father -- but Mary is not interested in details.

Precious is directed by her principal to an alternative school called Each One Teach One. Her class is populated by other girls who dropped out or were kicked out of public schools for various reasons; it's telling that even in such a motley group, Precious is still the most timid, the most withdrawn, and the most messed-up. The teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), is dedicated to her work, perhaps the first adult to ever take a genuine interest in helping Precious. The other students might be Precious' first friends, too.