This portrayal of Charles Bronson, the most violent and expensive prisoner in the history of the U.K., is wildly uneven. Bronson was born Michael Gordon Peterson but took the tough-as-nails actor’s name while fighting during one of his short stays outside prison walls.

Directed by Tom Hooper (John Adams) and based on David Peace’s fictionalized novel, The Damned United follows English soccer legend Brian Clough’s brief but memorable 44 days as the team manager of powerhouse Leeds United in 1974.

In Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, based on screenwriter Shauna Cross’s young adult novel Derby Girl, Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar, a small-town Texas teen who rebels against her beauty pageant-obsessed mom to secretly join a women’s roller derby team. Commonalities with Bend It Like Beckham and Coyote Ugly emerge throughout, and if that seems like an offbeat combination, how about a soundtrack that invokes both .38 Special and Radiohead (no surprise which song) for score?

Wide countryside shots, quality acting, and the appeal of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s early fashions make this French biopic an ease to watch. It’s stylish and elegant, like the Chanel label itself. Audrey Tautou, quintessentially French and a timeless screen presence, proves to be an ideal actress to play the legendary designer, channeling Chanel’s admirable sophistication throughout the film.

Writer-director Jane Campion’s Bright Star is a sensory experience, an exquisitely photographed period romance that forsakes sweeping camera movements and swelling orchestral score for the quiet immediacy of the moments that occur when love takes root.

Instead of a Facebook-era update on Heathers, screenwriter Diablo Cody’s follow-up to Juno quickly devolves into the kind of B-movie rubbish that became outdated decades ago.

Quentin Tarantino never met a genre he didn’t like, and nearly every movie he’s made thus far has been his own reworking of that specific style of film, whether it’s Reservoir Dogs’ heist film, Jackie Brown‘s blaxploitation or Death Proof‘s car chase movie. So in that spirit, it’s best to think of Inglourious Basterds as his foreign-language WWII Spaghetti Western.

When a movie that is called The Time Traveler’s Wife begins by depicting a traumatic event from the childhood of said time traveler Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana), you might begin to wonder why it’s not simply called The Time Traveler. Get used to the wondering.

In the latest opus from South Korea’s Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), you’ll be exposed to copious amounts of blood, forbidden sexual encounters and murderous appetites, but at the heart of Thirst, you’ll find the melodrama of two people caught up in selfless but unfulfilling lives.