he question of why we went to war is revisited inside a high-energy action film with enough truth thrown in to make it a smart political thriller. Reuniting the director with Matt Damon for the third time, the film is just as smart and kinetic as their pairings in the Bourne franchise, only with a new troupe of characters and a real-world feel.

Burton's movie avoids the impossible task of creating a real story out of Carroll’s book by ditching it entirely. This Alice is not an adaptation of Carroll’s novel, at least not exactly. Instead the classic Alice you have swimming around in your head is used as back story.

Unfortunately, good intentions don't always make for good screenwriting, and strong work from a cast can't overcome a screenplay hampered by cliches and obvious twists. There's a reason it's taken over a year for Brooklyn's Finest to come to theaters

"Too much" is what Alice in Wonderland is in nearly every way-- too much color, too much scenery, too much busy plot, too much exposition. The only thing there's not too much of is characters worth caring about-- in fact, there's none of those at all.

There’s talent here, too much for Cop Out to be truly terrible, but it’s talent wasted on a bad idea which probably never should have been made. This script doesn’t deserve these people and even if it did, they’re sitting in the wrong chairs.

While Breck Eisner's take on the original George A. Romero film doesn't do much to reinvent horror or paranoid thrillers, it's surprisingly entertaining and even a little smart. Whether it's because of that politically tinged plot or the sheer fact that it's a horror movie about grown-ups, The Crazies refuses to talk down to its audience

The Yellow Handkerchief. Who came up with that? There is nothing stimulating about that title. Forgiveness could be granted if this so-called yellow handkerchief had a defining moment in the film, but no. In fact, the yellow handkerchief’s 15 seconds of fame could have been easily replaced by something much bolder. Perhaps hoisting a yellow sail on a small boat? Just like the unnecessary inclusion of the yellow hanky, director Udayan Prasad makes the film tiresome by searching for meaning in vague places when the film works best in its simplicity.

Many are well aware of Veit Harlan and the incredible effect films like Jew Süss had on the Third Reich. The infamous German propagandist's films were mandatory viewing for S.S. troops during World War II, and even today much of his work is banned throughout the world. Harlan is long gone but he’s left behind far more than his notorious reputation; a vast bloodline remains. It’s one thing to point a finger at an evil historical figure, but the situation becomes relatable when examined by his relatives in Harlan: In The Shadow of Jew Suss, an interesting but only partially satisfying documentary about the filmmaker’s legacy.

while Roman Polanski's film occasionally plays well with dramatic tension and right well by its skilled lead actors, more often it feels limp and overblown, a take on modern political intrigue from a guy who's been in exile for decades. He clearly knows how it all ought to work, but doesn't quite have the right language any more.

Martin Scorsese knows something about surprise endings which twist meisters like M. Night Shyamalan seem to have forgotten. The twist doesn’t matter if you haven’t already told a good story. By the time Shutter Island gets to its twist, it has already told such a tale.

As a movie Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is the perfect advertisement for the books on which it’s based. Unfortunately at times it feels like nothing more than an advertisement. The best thing you can say about director Chris Columbus’s adaptation is that he’s incapable of destroying whatever magic and wonder it is in those books that has kept kids coming back for more. But it’s not for lack of trying.

Clearly someone conceived this as the American answer to Love, Actually, and being American, they made it bigger, louder, uglier and more ungainly than the original. We're the country that made It Happened One Night. We're better than this.