Drew Barrymore and Christina Applegate are tremendously appealing: it’s not long before you’re wishing Going the Distance was about them. Read more>>

Women are necessary in “The American,” like the Italian landscapes and winding stone stairways. Read more>>

“The Tillman Story” is upfront about wanting to challenge that faith, to question political assumptions and seeming historical frameworks. Read more>>

The Nazis’ infatuation with documentation is visible everywhere in “A Film Unfinished,” as German soldiers grab residents’ arms or push them along in the street, as starving children sit on curbs and adults hurry along sidewalks. Read more>>

“Woman Rebel” shows how one soldier challenges Nepalese tradition and also stakes a political claim. She’s not just soldiering. She has a cause. Read more>>

Nanny McPhee Returns establishes standard class differences between the country cousins and the city cousins — even as both sets of children are in need of retraining by the daunting Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson). Read more>>

It’s remarkable how much 18-year-old Kevin has in common with Ice Cube’s Craig (from Friday), as well as how few structural or political changes have occurred over the past 15 years. Read more>>

The documentary shows how these “average Americans” are all performers in more ways than one. Read more>>

“Eat Pray Love” presents Liz’s road to enlightenment in ways that are too reverent, too episodic, and too self-absorbed. Read more>>

“The Expendables” delivers a series of macho encounters within the team of expert killers and pointedly named hard-asses. Read more>>