The original Ghost Rider was a snoozefest with terrible special effects, a lame villain and a bored looking Nicolas Cage. What happens when the Cage is unleashed and Crank directors Neveldine/Taylor are behind the camera? You get the insane sequel, Spirit of Vengeance.

The always welcome bad ass side of Denzel Washington is in full effect in Safe House, which, while it doesn’t do anything original, is still a solid action movie.

The absurdist comedy sketch duo from Adult Swim come back for their first feature length film. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly guest.

Chronicle is a surprisingly great super hero/powers movie that doesn’t really benefit from being found footage but features great effects and a trio of well rounded protagonists.

The first great movie of the year, The Grey is a tense survival thriller with a surprising amount of emotional depth, despite what you might think from seeing the trailers.

Steven Soderbergh enters the action genre with Haywire, starring former American Gladiator and MMA fighter Gina Carano. As you might expect when you have an MMA fighter for your star, the fights are great, but what about the rest of the movie?

Mark Wahlberg stars as a master smuggler in Contraband but he should have smuggled a sense of fun and a script that wasn’t completely full of heist movie cliches.

Sending out 2011 with a bang, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is, arguably, the best entry in the series with great action and a fantastic cast led by a, still awesome, Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt.

Robert Downey Jr. is back on another case as Sherlock Holmes and if you liked the first movie, you’ll probably enjoy this sequel, as it as everything that was great about the first movie, just more of it.

If you don’t love the new Muppets movie, you have no soul.