Unless you’re talking about a visionary horror genius like, say, Guillermo Del Toro, I generally think it’s better to imply but not show the BBST (big bad scary thing). Frankly, our imagination of the horror is generally much more terrifying than whatever the director and CGI wizards can come up with. In fact, more often than not, the demon/ghost/witch/alien is kind of a joke.

Which brings us to Insidious. The first half of the film, about a beautiful young family that moves into a house that seems to be haunted (the whole thing is a rather explicit homage to Poltergeist, which I endorse), is filled with the genuine dread of the half-seen and hinted at.

The second half, where the family hires a medium and tackles the BBST head on, shows us the evil creatures that are afoot in a big way. And while I  have to admit that the evil freak show does provide some nice chills, it replaces the slow burn of dread with something overcooked  and cheesy.

Still, no one can accuse director James Wan of holding back....

When I saw The Adjustment Bureau trailer, with its smartly dressed men in fedoras going through portals and freezing time, I turned to my companion and said, “If you liked Inception. . .”

For sure, Universal Pictures wants us to think that The Adjustment Bureau is Inception-esque, but if anything, it’s actually more Capra-esque. It’s a story about a little guy going up against powerful cosmic forces to be with his one true love, and it’s downright quaint by today’s sci-fi standards (not totally surprising since it’s based on a Philip K. Dick story that was written in 1954).

Matt Damon plays David Norris, a maverick politician from Brooklyn who’s considered to be a rising star. But when a photo of him mooning some old college buddies is leaked to the press, his senatorial run is derailed. In the bathroom, just before he goes on stage to make his concession speech, he meets a free-spirited young woman named Elise (Emily Blunt) and they share a connection and a kiss. He fears he will never see her again, but several months later, he’s on a bus and there...

With his hulking frame and leonine face, I guess it was inevitable that Liam Neeson would morph into a bona fide action star. Maybe the better question was, “What took him so long?” (He’s almost 60.)

In the last two years alone, Neeson has starred in Taken, Clash of the Titans (it was he who uttered the immortal phrase: “Release the Kraken!”), and The A-Team. And now he’s in the Bourne-like Unknown,  aka Taken 2: This Time Nobody Knows What the Hell’s Going On.

I prefer the sensitive, gentle giant Neeson of  Schindler’s List, Husbands and Wives, and Kinsey. But I won’t go so far as to agree with the critic who compared Neeson’s career trajectory to Nicolas Cage’s. Frankly, Neeson was never that good—and his latest movies aren’t nearly that bad.

In fact, on its own terms, Unknown—about a biochemist (Neeson) who travels to Berlin with his wife (January Jones), konks his head in a car accident, and awakens to find out that his identity has been...

In a way, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never is the best use of 3D technology that I’ve seen all year. If you are a tween girl, what’s the only thing better than Bieber? All together now: Bieber in 3D. And the movie takes full advantage of that fact, having our pint-sized heartthrob pump his fist at the audience, practically shimmy onto our laps, and, in one inspired moment, just stand there, in all his 3D glory, flipping his shiny, shiny hair.

Despite its silly, James Bond-esque title, Never Say Never is actually pretty good: part concert film/part Behind-the-Music-style biopic. In many ways, Bieber was our first true YouTube-era superstar. The film cleverly starts by showing him among other YouTube memes: There’s sneezing panda, there’s scared kitty cat, and there’s a pubescent cutie-patootie singing Chris Brown songs in his bedroom. OMG, indeed.

Turns out that while the talented, clean cut Bieber seems to have been created in a teen idol lab, he was, in fact, raised in Ontario by his single mother and doting grandparents. He received a toy drum when he was 5 or 6...