Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
A horror comedy that proves that with the right actors you can make an amusing movie even if a lot of your ideas are borrowed.

Name : Tom Keogh / Alias : Seattle Times
Clever, creative and emotionally satisfying, "The Final Girls" is a horror-comedy and popcorn movie that keeps its original premise fresh all the way to a delightful, surprise ending.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
The mother-daughter material keeps the movie watchable, even as the filmmakers seem to consider its weaknesses the fun parts.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Breslin, whose recent resume hasn't lived up to her Oscar nomination for "Little Miss Sunshine," needs to find something worthy of her talents. An Oscar nominee shouldn't even watch "Final Girl," much less star in it.

Name : Dennis Harvey / Alias : Variety
Modern teens find themselves trapped in a 1980s slasher movie in this amusingly meta thriller.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
This patchy, underwritten thriller could almost pass for a critique of any number of genre forebears in which the mere presence of a hot, ass-kicking female avenger is meant to seem subversive.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
Above all else, "The Final Girls" is broad and affectionate in its mockery, making fun of the frequent association between sex and murder in movies of this ilk and other easy targets.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
The gender commentary is still on point, and The Final Girls successfully disembowels its target trope. But it works better as film criticism than it does as a film.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
The Final Girls offers a lovely twist on the horror genre and some good laughs for movie fans of every stripe. Nice to see the more ludicrous elements of retro slasher fare get the mockery they deserve.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Genre enthusiasts will get a kick out of Todd Strauss-Schulson's creative homage to classic slasher movies, which respects familiar horror conventions while introducing a sly contemporary perspective.

Name : Sherilyn Connelly / Alias : Village Voice
The Final Girls plays with the tropes of the slasher genre as much as its PG-13 rating will allow, and the final showdown is a thing of beauty, but it never attempts to be scary or menacing.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
As horror comedies go, this one sadly winds up somewhere between Scary Movie 4 and 5.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
The Final Girls is all smiles and winks, but lacks the blood to make its horror satire pulse.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Todd Strauss-Schulson's meta send-up of '80s sex-equals-death slasher movies keeps its goofy good humor throughout, and tosses in a little almost-genuine feeling into the mix for good measure.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A playful deconstruction of the slasher film that ultimately packs a surprisingly affecting punch.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Despite the pedestrian screenplay (by Jimenez and Audrey Diwan), Dujardin and Lellouche are magnetic performers who slip easily into their antagonistic roles.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Jimenez adopts a vintage-kitsch sensibility, taking a disappointingly generic approach to his hard-to-follow narrative.

Name : John DeFore / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A procedural epic whose complicated narrative is propelled by visceral action sequences and an unusually thrilling soundtrack.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Gangster movies should not be mildly interesting.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Jimenez's sprawling cat-and-mouse thriller loses momentum and focus in the homestretch, but until then its '70s sun-and-sin-on-the-Cote d'Azur vibe is electric.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
How can you dislike a film that signals a killing with "Bang Bang" and a villain with "The Snake"?

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Connection" isn't all that different from a lot of police procedurals that have come before, but there's something about this particular gritty true-crime story that still fascinates all these years later.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
Jimenez, making his second feature, fails to provide the regular jolts of electricity this material needs.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
While the story lacks focus here and there, the film never feels overplayed. It's a work of bloody style and solid substance.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It may prove too slow for some and the meandering can be a little maddening, but overall it's worth the effort.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
It starts with gunshots - a Mercedes and its driver are riddled by motorcycle-riding assassins in broad daylight - and the pace of "The Connection" is bang-bang brisk most of the rest of the way.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
There are no elaborate car chases or dizzyingly choreographed shootouts. Yet it's nonetheless a compelling portrait of two men in a specific time and place.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The film is engaging, propulsive, cut with rare brio, chockablock with consummate tough-guy business.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's a stylish affair, very solidly made if not exactly breaking new ground in our understanding of events or in the way the movies depict them.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Riveting from its first moments, "The Connection" is fascinating in its presentation of character, as well as for its glimpse into the workings of an international drug empire and into the ways an imaginative cop found to chip at its power.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
A common problem in crime-centric movies: The bad guys are almost always more fascinating than the good guys. Dujardin's bull-necked, hard-charging performance makes Pierre a worthy adversary.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Sports the most schnozz-tacular array of craggy-faced macho men this side of Easter Island.

Name : Jon Bream / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
A must-see for liner-note readers.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
With a son's love and duty, Tedesco . breezily celebrates the team that laid down a thousand riffs back just before pop became too serious for anonymous craftsmanship.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
Good-natured look at the virtuoso workhorses of classic rock and pop.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Long on nostalgia, the film does shed further light on the genius of Brian Wilson and the unfair uproar over the Monkees' need for musical backup. Turns out even the Beach Boys required the Wrecking Crew to rock.

Name : Mark Feeney / Alias : Boston Globe
Denny Tedesco's lively and loving documentary takes its title from the name collectively applied to the group of two to three dozen Los Angeles studio musicians who dominated rock and pop recordings there during the 1960s and early '70s.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Though their story has taken decades to reach the screen, it has been worth the wait.

Name : Jim Harrington / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
It can be uncomfortable to pull back the curtain on some of the most beloved rock songs of all time. Yet, it's worth it in order to meet The Wrecking Crew.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
With its release held up for seven years because of rights issues, Denny Tedesco's illuminating documentary about the unsung L.A. session musicians who provided the backbeat for some of the greatest songs from the '50s through the '80s can now be seen.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"The Wrecking Crew" succeeds as important cultural history. But it's also deeply personal for Tedesco .

Name : Jon Caramanica / Alias : New York Times
Mostly, it's hagiography, with stars like Cher and Brian Wilson used as character witnesses to the players' greatness.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
It'll make you listen to "Good Vibrations," a song you've heard a million times, with fresh ears.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : NPR
The studio musicians rarely got credit on or off the albums. In The Wrecking Crew, Denny Tedesco, whose father was a Wrecking Crew guitarist, rights that wrong.

Name : Jim Farber / Alias : New York Daily News
These unsung heroes are the subject of an illuminating, witty and comprehensive documentary by Denny Tedesco, son of the Crew's inventive guitarist, the late Tommy Tedesco.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
The enchanting Kaye - "I was making more money than the President" - probably deserves her own film.

Name : Joe Leydon / Alias : Variety
The unsung heroes who played on stacks of wax during the '60s pop era are celebrated in a hugely entertaining documentary.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Fascinating .