Chanoch Ze'evi's documentary, Hitler's Children, tracks down survivors of the top command of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. What they've made of the world is unique from person to person and raises questions in the viewer, as well.

You know what an audience-friendly film is. It tells a story that engages you about characters you can like and root for. Yet those films -- movies that seek to tell a story that uplifts or inspires -- often get short shrift from critics for that reason alone.

In telling Robinson's story, Helgeland doesn't dwell on the endless barrage of racist bile that Robinson (and his wife) endured, but he doesn't shy from it either. As a result, Robinson's achievement takes on more meaning and more power.

It's that rare evening of theater where something that was already familiar becomes new, yielding unexpected meaning and feelings.

If Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life was too much the dialogue-driven, story-heavy film for your liking, you'll probably be more in the mood for his latest, To the Wonder, which features Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Olga Kurylenko in its cast.

Disconnect is upsetting, exhilarating and frightening in equal measures. It's got the ability to pierce your complacency with its cautionary tale.

To say that Evil Dead is a film for a specific audience is an understatement. If things like dismemberment and self-mutilation make you queasy -- as they would any normal person -- then you probably shouldn't even visit the same multiplex where this film is showing.

While The Company You Keep can't sustain itself as the kind of thriller it's being pitched as, it's still a thoughtful, provocative story about the continuing battle between idealism and cynicism.

Neither terrible nor revelatory, Ramaa Mosley's The Brass Teapot is the kind of movie you might stumble across on cable and stick with, if only because, well, you've got nothing better to do.

This is a film that challenges the audience to plug into the story and stick with it. But if you do, it pays off with a portrait of a manipulative, dark character, one who continually surprises the viewer with his choices.

If the first G.I. Joe movie was an F, Joe 2 is, at best, a C-. More likely a D+. Barely passing.

Andrew Niccol's film of The Host starts so well that, when it suddenly slows to a crawl 20 minutes later, your impulse is to give it some slack -- to let it find its feet and get back on track. Unfortunately, it never does.

At this point in movie history, the Hollywood studios are to movies what McDonald's is to cuisine: a factory producing products that are nearly identical in their lack of depth, quality or concern for the viewing audience's intellect.

Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines is a sure-handed effort from a director who proved himself capable of dramatizing difficult human emotions in Blue Valentine.

A second-rate Die Hard knock-off with Gerard Butler playing the Bruce Willis role, Olympus Has Fallen is preposterously overblown, an action movie that seems to prove the old saying: If brains were gunpowder, this movie wouldn't have enough to blow its own nose.

Actor Seymour Cassel is on the phone and, when asked what he's been doing, says, "Well, I'm looking for work."

A blend of archival footage and recreations of the cave and these people in their younger days, No Place on Earth is both a reminder of a horrifying period in history and a primer on the resilience and determination of which human beings are capable.

You can count on one hand the number of good romantic comedies in any given year. Not that people aren't making them -- they just don't do them very well. Which is why Admission is such a treat.

The darling of the Australian Academy Awards and a hit on the festival circuit, The Sapphires is that pure treat: an aggressively entertaining movie about the struggle, uplift, romance and joy of music.

Here's the most important thing: The majority of them aren't worth seeing or reviewing. There used to be filters for this kind of thing. They were called film festivals.

As allegories go, Juan Diego Solanas' Upside Down is about as deep as that famous Frank Gorshin Star Trek episode -- we're talking classic Star Trek, mind you.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a movie for 8-year-olds who haven't seen a lot of movies and provide fresh eyes for its tired gags. Anyone older will see every punchline coming long before it arrives.

Everyone knows who Gen. Douglas MacArthur was. But Gen. Bonner Fellers? Not so much. So when actor Matthew Fox took on the role of Fellers in Emperor, which opened in limited release March 8, he figured the interpretation was up to him.

It's populated with characters who seem to have no interior life -- only a devotion to the pursuit of sensation via the eternal party. And, in his own oblique way, Korine offers commentary about just how empty that world is.

Why would a movie studio try to stop critics from reviewing movies? It's called a review embargo -- and it seems a little self-explanatory. But still, I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss a little movie-critic inside-baseball stuff. Perhaps we can get a larger discussion going.