When you're dealing with a filmmaker who has had as lengthy and deliberately varied a career as Steven Soderbergh, singling out one movie to label his absolute best can be a tricky proposition. But a strong case could be made for The Limey, the 1999 thriller he made with screenwriter Lem Dobbs and star Terrence Stamp. Aside from being a terrific film, The Limey is perhaps -- out of all the entries in his filmography -- the most representative of Soderbergh's formal and narrative interests, from the way it fractures its narrative to its dry sense of humor to the morally compromised anti-hero at its center. Made right after the director's big studio breakthrough, Out of Sight, The Limey may be a less jazzy film, but it's far richer in terms of its story. One gives you a great ride, the other lingers in your memory.

In the new action picture Contraband, Mark Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, a retired smuggler who's forced back into the life when his brother-in-law commits a colossal screw-up by dumping a drug shipment that belongs to small-time hood Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) with a highly combustible temper and an itchy trigger finger. In order to secure the funds he needs to cover his relative's debt, Chris makes one last run to Panama, where a shipment of counterfeit money is awaiting him to transport back stateside. Meanwhile, back in his New Orleans home, his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and their two sons are being menaced by Tim, so Chris calls upon his old friend and partner Sebastian (Ben Foster) to keep an eye on them. But it turns out that Sebastian has a few secrets... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

There's a clever gag early on in The Adventures of Tintin that effectively passes the baton from the title character's comic-book origins in the 1930s to his 21st century incarnation as the hero of a lavish animated blockbuster. In the scene, investigative journalist/globetrotting adventurer Tintin (played here by Jamie Bell via the magic of motion capture technology) is sitting with his back to the audience, having his picture drawn by a flea market street artist. The illustrator puts the finishing touches on the portrait and hands it over to his subject, saying proudly, "I think I've captured your likeness." With that, Tintin turns towards the camera and we see the character's past and present in the same frame. On the canvas is a sketch of Tintin as Belgian artist Hergé first drew him all those years ago. Next to that is the version of the character the animators at Weta Digital -- the New Zealand effects house operated by Peter Jackson, one of the primary creative forces behind this new movie, along with its director Steven Spielberg -- have come up with. While these two faces aren't precisely mirror images of each other, the mo-cap figure is still recognizably Tintin. In a single shot, the filmmakers convincingly lift this iconic character off the two-dimensional comics page and turn him into a walking, talking movie star.

After the year-end glut of prestige pictures and awards bait, it's kind of a relief to settle in for a pair of high-concept blockbusters that have no greater ambition beyond blowing stuff up real good. That's the mission statement behind Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol, the second and fourth installments in their respective franchises. The former reunites director Guy Ritchie with Robert Downey Jr. as a strapping, ass-kicking Sherlock and Jude Law as his right hand man/pseudo boyfriend Dr. Watson. The latter matches Pixar wizard Brad Bird (making his live-action directorial debut) with Tom Cruise reprising his role as Ethan Hunt, the Impossible Missions Force's premiere covert agent. Both films emphasize spectacle over story (Ghost Protocol even more so, since several sequences were filmed using IMAX cameras), action over acting and explosions over erudition. But only one of them actually makes good on its promise of escapist entertainment.

With its Greco-Roman setting, computer-generated backdrops and endless scenes of ridiculously ripped warriors engaging in ultra-stylized, ultra-bloody ultraviolence, Immortals is obviously positioning itself to be the next 300. In fact, the film's advertising materials proudly trumpet the connection between Zack Snyder's surprise 2006 smash hit based on Frank Miller's graphic novel -- which chronicled the tale of the Spartan king Leonidas' (Gerard Butler) last stand at Thermopylae -- and this spin on the myth of Theseus (played by Henry Cavill, who is currently playing the Man of Steel in a new Superman flick directed by... Zack Snyder). Since Snyder is busy trying to make audiences believe a man can fly, 300 producers Mark Canton and Gianni Nunnari turned to Tarsem Singh, director of cult oddities The Cell and The Fall, to produce a movie in its predecessor's image, albeit with some of his own distinct visual flourishes. So how do 300 and Immortals match up? Quien es mas macho? We pit them head to head in a few key creative areas. (Except for the screenplay, because, really -- who's watching either of these movies for the dialogue?)

Time actually equals money in Andrew Niccol's (Gattaca, The Truman Show) latest adventure, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. That analogy is about as heavy-handed as you can possibly imagine and even if you can get past the social commentary, you'll still have to sit through nearly two hours' worth of enormous plot holes, uninteresting mysterious backstories and what is essentially a shoddy mash-up of Logan's Run and Bonnie and Clyde.

Although he's only wielded James Bond's license to kill in two movies -- with a third on the way sometime next year -- Daniel Craig is wasting little time preparing for life after 007. Since the release of Quantum of Solace in 2008, the British actor has shot five non-Bond features, including this summer's Cowboys & Aliens and two highly-anticipated fall films, Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He's also headlining the new horror movie Dream House, which isn't being screened for critics in advance of its opening this Friday... a move that doesn't inspire much confidence in its quality. Still, you can't blame Craig for booking so many gigs in between Bond movies; he's undoubtedly noticed how his predecessors in the role of the world's most famous secret agent have occasionally struggled to move on once their days ordering shaken, not stirred martinis are done. Here's a look back at how the other Men That Have Been Bond have fared once the mantle was passed to someone else.

Like most movie critics, I've been looking forward to this fall's onslaught of prestige pictures after the summer blockbuster season. From Moneyball and The Ides of March to Melancholia and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the next three months are packed with hugely promising, very serious titles from directors, writers and actors I respect a great deal. But amidst all the high drama, there's always room for a 'splodey, ass-kicking action picture, which is why I've been anticipating Killer Elite since I first caught wind of it in late July.

Did I want to be the person who hated the movie that was based on the true story of Sam Childers, a former drug-addicted criminal who turned from bad-ass "hillbilly" (his word, not mine) to African child-saving martyr? No. Was I that jerk who left the theater groaning instead of giving a standing ovation? You betcha. I want to be clear that every awful thing I'm going to say about this movie has nothing to do with Childers as a person, because I'm certainly not writing this from my self-built orphanage in Africa. I'm not really here to criticize the man's Machiavellian philosophy about whether or not extreme violence is ever justified -- not today, anyways. So when I say Childers from now on, it will be referring to the actor who portrayed him in Machine Gun Preacher, Gerard Butler, who, given the role of playing an extremely angry man with a questionable sense of right and wrong, did a fine job. The movie's content, however, made me feel compelled to write a big WARNING label for anyone interested in this film who fits into the following categories:

In the John Singleton-directed thriller Abduction, Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner plays a seemingly ordinary teenager who discovers that the life he's been leading for some 18 years is one giant lie. Instead of a popular high-schooler living in suburban bliss with parents Maria Bello and Jason Isaacs, he's actually a kick-ass action hero that's been targeted by a high-level government agency eager to get more intel on him and his real mom and dad. Talk about a buzz-kill. Although on the upside, going on the run to uncover his actual identity does get him out of having to take his final exams. And maybe while he's searching for his elusive origins, he'll cross paths with some of these other men and women who discovered that their memories of their pasts aren't exactly on the up-and-up. [Warning: Spoilers ahead.]