“Oz the Great and Powerful” aims for nostalgia in older viewers who grew up on “The Wizard of Oz” and still hold the classic dear, while simultaneously enchanting a newer, younger audience. It never really accomplishes either successfully.

Aspider crawls up the leg of 18-year-old India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) early in Park Chan-wook's English-language debut, “Stoker,” and she regards it passively, intrigued.

Michael Haneke takes a subject you don't often see in movies and probably don't even want to see — the slow, steady deterioration of an elderly woman — and handles it with great grace in “Amour.”

A playful, elegantly made little horror film,“Mama” teasingly sustains a game of hide-and-seek as it tantalizes the audience with fleeting apparitions of the title character while maintaining interest in two deeply disturbed little orphan girls.

A big-budget, effects-laden, 3D retelling of the Jack and the Beanstalk legend may seem like the unlikeliest pairing yet of director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie, but “Jack the Giant Slayer” ends up being smart, thrilling and a whole lot of fun.

Imagine a “Twilight” where the panting, flirting teens were in on the joke, where the gulf between them was more about communication skills than supernatural schisms.

For anyone who cringed just a little while watching the trailer for “Lincoln” and worried that it might be a near-parody of a Steven Spielberg film, with its heartfelt proclamations, sentimental tones and inspiring John Williams score, fret not.

Staying incredibly faithful to the real-life story of the Jingmei Girls High School (景美女中) tug-of-war team's arduous journey to success, “Step Back to Glory” (志氣) is Taiwan's own inspirational sports movie.

A true story of the unrelenting endurance and perseverance of a group of passionate teenage girls, in a film that firmly grasps audiences and tugs at the heartstrings with an emotionally charged story of tug-of-war, “Step Back to Glory” (志氣), stands out from all of the other Cinderella-story movies in its faithful portrayal of a real-life event.

Tom Hooper's extravaganza, big-screen telling of the beloved musical “Les Miserables” is as relentlessly driven as the ruthless Inspector Javert himself. It simply will not let up until you've Felt Something — powerfully and repeatedly — until you've touched the grime and smelled the squalor and cried a few tears of your own.