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Something Borrowed

There are moments - few and far between, admittedly - when Something Borrowed briefly shines. Alas, those isolated instances aside, the movie is largely a waste of time. A tortured romantic comedy constructed on an uncertain foundation of artifice...

Run Time: 1:52
U.S. Release Date: 2011-05-06
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Sexual Content, Profanity)
Genre: ROMANCE/COMEDY
Director: Luke Greenfield
Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson, Colin Egglesfield, ...
Source Code

Source Code is what might happen if one cross-bred Groundhog Day with 24 and The Matrix. The resultant offspring is not as trippy or successful as any of its parents, but it fits nicely into the growing niche of mind-bending virtual reality experi...

Run Time: 1:33
U.S. Release Date: 2011-04-01
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Violence, Profanity)
Genre: SCIENCE FICTION/THRILLER
Director: Duncan Jones
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, ...
Straw Dogs

Sam Peckinpah's 1971 adaptation of Gordon Williams' novel elicited more controversy than the uncompromising director expected, in large part because of the unflinching and somewhat ambiguous depiction of a double rape. In addition to the unexpurgat...

Run Time: 1:50
U.S. Release Date: 2011-09-16
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Sexual Content, Profanity)
Genre: THRILLER
Director: Rod Lurie
Cast: James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgård, ...
Sucker Punch

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." When Shakespeare penned those words for Act V Scene V of MacBeth, he might have emerged from a screening of Sucker Punch. This movie isn't bad in the way some incompetent...

Run Time: 1:49
U.S. Release Date: 2011-03-25
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Violence, Profanity,Sexual Content)
Genre: ACTION/THRILLER
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, ...
Super 8

Super 8 is an homage by its writer/director, J.J. Abrams, to its producer, Steven Spielberg. It's also a love letter to all those with a passion for filmmaking that emerges at a young age. Super 8 is the kind of high-profile movie we so rarely se...

Run Time: 1:52
U.S. Release Date: 2011-06-10
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Violence, Profanity)
Genre: SCIENCE FICTION
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths, ...
Take This Waltz

Michelle Williams must have an affinity for appearing in movies about melancholy relationships. Although Take This Waltz is by no means as big a downer as Blue Valentine, neither does it adhere to Hollywood formulas about how romantic dramas should...

Run Time: 1:56
U.S. Release Date: 2012-06-29
MPAA Rating: "R" (Sexual Content, Profanity, Nudity)
Genre: DRAMA
Director: Sarah Polley
Cast: Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby, ...
Terri

In high school, there are two kinds of kids: the popular ones and everyone else. I suspect most of us, looking back on our teen years, would identify ourselves as "outsiders." Whether others would agree is open to debate, but being an outsider is m...

Run Time: 1:45
U.S. Release Date: 2011-07-22
MPAA Rating: "R" (Sexual Content, Profanity, Drugs)
Genre: DRAMA
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Cast: Jacob Wysocki, John C. Reilly, Bridger Zadina, ...

It's not that there isn't nudity in films any more. Quite the contrary; approximately 50% of R-rated movies on average have toplessness, bottomlessness, or something in between. What's different in the '10s is that it's rare for one of the leads to ...

Every year, I feel less confident about calling my roster of the worst movies, a "Bottom 10" list. The reason is simple - there are a lot of terrible films I intentionally miss. By all accounts, two of 2011's most abysmal are Bucky Larson: Born to ...

I started compiling mid-year Top 10 lists a number of years ago, in large part to argue that there are oases in the vast desert of the early-year movie release schedule. Since that first list was posted in July 2004, the landscape hasn't changed much...