By Matt Brunson

WIN WIN

DIRECTED BY Tom McCarthy

STARS Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan

If life is indeed about enjoying the little things, then it's entirely appropriate that the best scenes in Win Win are the little slice-of-life ones. Writer-director Tom McCarthy is a master at making movies that tap into instantly recognizable emotions and experiences — his previous pictures were 2003's superb The Station Agent (Netflix that one ASAP) and 2007's The Visitor — and this unassuming picture is at its finest when it follows that rule.

By Matt Brunson

HANNA

DIRECTED BY Joe Wright

STARS Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett

With a young girl as its steely-eyed, bloodletting protagonist, Hanna can't help but be compared to Kick-Ass, what with its steely-eyed, bloodletting Hit Girl. Bring it on: This is one film that can take down its competition.

By Matt Brunson

INSIDIOUS

DIRECTED BY James Wan

STARS Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne

It's not as if the world really needed yet another exorcist tale when The Last Exorcism hit theaters late last summer, but that masterfully constructed faux-documentary unexpectedly proved to be a welcome addition to the horror canon. Likewise, while it's probably time to call for a moratorium on both haunted-house thrillers and creepy-child sagas, Insidious milks a bit of innovativeness from both these sub-genres before self-destructing.

By Matt Brunson

SUCKER PUNCH

DIRECTED BY Zack Snyder

STARS Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish

It wouldn't be quite accurate to call Sucker Punch the ultimate fan-boy film, but it's a designation that nevertheless offers a near-perfect fit. It only fails the fan-boy test in that its protagonists aren't chiseled macho men but rather five women, and as everyone knows, fan boys are too scared of modes of feminine expression, individuality and sexuality to accept ladies as anything more than arm-accessories for the taciturn heroes (it's no coincidence that the fan boy's favorite female character is probably Kick-Ass's Hit Girl, a young child still years away from true womanhood). In virtually every other regard, though, Sucker Punch is a (wet) dream come true, an orgy full of Dolby sound and CGI fury. To finish the paraphrase by stating that it signifies nothing would be to drag Shakespeare into a world — and a conversation — that would baffle him. He wouldn't be the only one: As another critic noted after attempting to explain the plot, "What the fuck am I talking about?"

By Matt Brunson

Has Duncan Jones already sold out? It's hard to say, but Source Code, his sophomore effort as director, can only be considered a disappointment given his knock-it-out-of-the-park debut. 2009's Moon, which missed my 10 Best list that year by one spot, was a dazzling achievement, the sort of heady sci-fi extravaganza one would expect from the son of David Bowie. Source Code is far more mainstream — a thriller designed to give cheer to the weekend multiplex crowds. That's not meant as a knock — after all, Inception was a big-budget project from a major studio, and we see how that one turned out — and Jones shows that he can handle A-list actors and big-screen action without breaking a sweat. Still, Moon proved that his skills might be better suited to less traditional fare, and he should leave stuff like Source Code to such filmmakers as Joe Carnahan or the brothers Scott.

Or perhaps I'm just overly bitter because Source Code, overall a highly entertaining movie, concludes with what will doubtless remain one of the worst endings of the year. (No spoilers here.) Before we get to this boneheaded section of the film, we're thrust from the start into the gimmicky setup. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), a soldier who had been stationed in Afghanistan, finds that he's now being utilized in an experiment that allows him to occupy the body of one Sean Fentress, who's about to be killed, along with all the other passengers, by a bomb planted on a Chicago commuter train. Colter's mission is to use those last eight minutes in Sean's body to ferret out the killer's identity and thereby prevent any future attacks. As explained by his military contact (Vera Farmiga) and the experiment's creator (Jeffrey Wright), he will keep being sent back to those eight minutes until he acquires the knowledge being sought.

It's a Groundhog Day scenario mined for tension rather than laughs, and while it's not that difficult to ID the assassin, the fun comes in watching Colter repeatedly interact with the other commuters, which include Sean's sweet friend Christina (Michelle Monaghan), and use knowledge from previous "trips" to inform the decisions he makes on subsequent jumps. There's really only one way for all this to end, but scripter Ben Ripley, believe it or not, jerry-rigs his own storyline by coming up with a conclusion that's illogical, infuriating and impossible to defend. It provides Source Code with a sour coda that cripples an otherwise sweet ride.

By Matt Brunson

THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED

DIRECTED BY Jim Kohlberg

STARS J.K. Simmons, Lou Taylor Pucci

The music never stops in The Music Never Stopped, and that would be a problem if the tunes on parade were on the order of, say, Phil Collins' execrable "Sussudio" or Rebecca Black's splinter-in-the-tongue Web hit "Friday." But with a soundtrack lined with the likes of The Beatles and Bob Dylan (even Buffalo Springfield's superb "For What It's Worth" makes an appearance), there's no chance of anybody finding themselves bleeding from the ears. Bleeding from the heart, though, might be another matter.

• Simon Pegg in Paul.

By Matt Brunson

PAUL

DIRECTED BY Greg Mottola

STARS Simon Pegg, Nick Frost

Mel Brooks once proudly declared that his movies "rise below vulgarity," and it's a reasonable bet that any film prominently featuring Seth Rogen will exercise its own right to wallow in raunch. So while Rogen may be providing the voice for the title alien in the new comedy Paul, don't expect a cuddly E.T. on the order of Steven Spielberg's famous creation. Paul doesn't ooh and ahh; he gets to the point in plain English, as when he asks a startled human worried about undergoing the clichéd ritual of anal probing, "Why does everyone always assume that? How much can I learn from an ass?"

• Bradley Cooper and Andrew Howard in Limitless.

By Matt Brunson

LIMITLESS

DIRECTED BY Neil Burger

STARS Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish

For a film about a drug able to turn its user into a genius, Limitless isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the box — or the smartest movie in the multiplex, as it were.

By Matt Brunson

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES

DIRECTED BY Jonathan Liebesman

STARS Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez

It takes a special type of hack to make Roland Emmerich look like Steven Spielberg, but Jonathan Liebesman appears to be the right man for the job. The less said about most Emmerich movies (like 2012 and Matthew Broderick Meets Godzilla), the better, but he did helm Independence Day back in the mid-1990s, and for all that film's faults — specifically, that it contained not a single idea it could rightfully call its own — it knew how to milk the hell out of its H.G. Wells-by-way-of-Hollywood premise and, silly as it sounds, make us proud to be human. Battle: Los Angeles, which mines the same territory as ID and countless other alien-invasion opuses that came before it, is so feeble that we really don't care who wins the global skirmish: the E.T.s or the earthlings. At least if the aliens win, we won't have to sit through any more movies like this one.