Aaron Hillis

Rigorous and outrageous, Greenaway's defiant approach to narrative only offers insight into his character, not Eisenstein's.

The film takes one entire act too long to shake its mopey fog and get crackling.

Cohn is clearly on the right track toward making the kind of nuanced grown-up dramas that sadly are no longer in vogue.

Despite Wilson’s early control and aesthetic confidence, there isn’t a single scripted idea of weight or emotionality that pays off.

Equally lionizing but richer in detail than the recent Michael Peña-led biopic César Chávez, this occasionally stirring doc portrait of the late Latino labor organizer and civil rights icon frames his legacy around a single act of protest.

All the secrets, lies, and consequences feel as authentic as the Appalachian milieu, but the film lacks the memorable idiosyncrasy of a River's Edge, or more fittingly, the myth-making lyricism of Matewan.

Vertigo this ain’t, but there’s some quasi-Gothic charm in the baroque premise and eccentric marginal details, including a mathematically gifted dwarf.

It’s all a curious humanist experiment with anecdotal surprises and whimsy, but its motives aren’t in sharp focus like Doyle’s hotshot imagery.

Jersey Girl may have come from his soul, but it contradicts the charm of a Kevin Smith movie.

Directed with little flair, a one-sided perspective and a questionable sense of moral responsibility by Dan Klores (his negligent lack of an editorial voice in the couple's lunacy reeks of train-wreck exploitation), Crazy Love is a disturbingly captivating tabloid horror, but that's not Klores' doing.

Director Teddy Chan's glossy thriller pays tribute to martial-arts cinema by casting enough Hong Kong industry legends to rival the cameo count of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It's a pity, then, that it's an undeniably bland film in style and story, despite a few elaborately staged fight sequences.

When he runs out of material to tickle with, Black dips into his musically tenacious "deedle-diddle-dee" for some sure-fire ridiculousness.

If the banality of life within the Bordeaux gentry is the point, then the ensuing oppressiveness is immaculately depicted through precise performances and camerawork—just don't call it emotionally engaging drama.

Mostly due to the assured polish of cinematographer Sean Stiegemeier, Chapman punches above its featherweight budget, but the punch is ultimately pulled as both strands of the narrative intersect with one last reveal of unresolved melodrama that feels coldly calculated in its cause and effect.

Spoiled by its own insatiable desire for envelope-pushing flair; it’s wider-scoped when it should be intimate, splashy instead of subtle, icky but not scary.

The film is undeniably elevated by its exotic milieu. It's a shame, then, that it's stuck with such a familiar coming-of-age call to adventure.

Are these iconic, antihero relics smartly satirized in a post-slasher, or is FVJ just more dated, third-wave trash? Disappointingly, it's the latter.

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

One-dimensional fluff piece.

When the secret is finally divulged, it’s such a letdown that it feels unfairly manipulative to have sat through such agonizing tedium.

Big and dumb and loud and entirely past its prime.

The Ten has one foot in "Monty Python's Meaning of Life" and another in their "Life of Brian," but ultimately we get the David Letterman School of Comedy: mediocre jokes continually repeated until they sometimes become uncomfortably funny.

What’s missing here is the amnesiac hook that made "The Bourne Identity" such a sleeper hit.

So stupendously funny at times that she (Streep) nearly salvages the whole thing.

The dubious whimsy, devoid of any directorial voice, plays more like a very special episode of Dawson’s Creek.

Appropriately hunky but neutered of the brute sexuality he exhibited in Bullhead and Rust and Bone, Schoenaerts and his lack of bodice-busting tension with Winslet mirrors the film's transparent, often anachronistic inauthenticity.

As a fan, it's upsetting to admit that Dumont's ideas and insights have narrowed with this picture, his relaxed pacing now lethargic, his physically and mentally thick characters too familiar, and his ice-water shocks a bit predictable. It would seem self-parodic if it weren't so damn tragic.

As the phrase turns, it's better when things come off WITHOUT a hitch.

With his latest, the sci-fi–action–adventure The Chronicles of Riddick, Vin Diesel has established himself as the new face of morally ambiguous anti-heroes.

If you subtracted from the story and style components recycled from landmark sci-fi films of Hollywood past, you’d be left with Will Smith wisecracking over a box of unformatted floppies. I, Unimpressed.

Favorably, Atkinson’s family-friendly, rubber-limbed professionalism can revitalize even the most vapid of material, which this certainly is. Anyone who has seen an episode of Black Adder can tell you that he’s leaps and bounds funnier than this sitcom-grade bauble.

The footage relies more on idealistic testimonies than a cinematic experience showcasing DBA's vitality.

Criticism mutated long ago, after the internet's floodgates opened, and that outmoded disconnect between The Film Critic and today's film critics underscores how the persistent references to cinema and film writing are self-awarely mimicking clichés but not subverting them.

This blatantly big-hearted product isn't half as vibrant as the original 2005 Wired article on which it's based, and myopically neglects to address Arizona's troubling anti-immigration legislation through even a splash of hindsight.

There are too many vaguely defined interpersonal dynamics and marginal characters (hi, Liv Tyler and Judy Greer!) that distract needlessly from the earnest tone of an outrageous set-up.

Bernard Rose's elegantly staged but tonally flat biopic embraces the myth, even underscoring Paganini's rising fame, scandalous hedonism, and womanizing as an anachronistic form of rock-star fantasy.

The film is as shallow as its characters' oversexed conversations.

Gilsig's transformation is quietly convincing, but the film itself is flatter and less cinematically gratifying than most television dramas.

Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, and True Blood's Ryan Kwanten co-star in this glossy, lifelessly paced edition as three of the criminals, though their underwritten personas and motivations are fairly interchangeable.

Though it dodders engagingly at its antihero's pace, Remember is not subtle.

The narrative strikes a mostly sensible (if overly earnest) ratio of inner-turmoil human theater to B-movie monster hunt, before ultimately tilting toward the classic drive-in with climactic siege action and old-school effects.

This thanklessly watchable film, recut since its mixed Sundance premiere, may not warrant Holden Caulfield’s trademark judgment of phoniness — but, like any clichéd writing, deserves rejection.

For his fourth paycheck-cashing run through “J-Bruck’s” action-hero gauntlet, Cage lazily plays Benjamin Franklin Gates-the first of many overstuffed social-studies references.

Unstylized, inconsistent, unconvincing, and familiar to a fault.

With its cheap scares, its defiant lack of special effects, and the most blatant usage of a red coat as a stand-out prop since Schindler’s List, Godsend is as much an experiment-gone-wrong as its Frankensteinesque plot.

Despite the attempts of the Academy Award-winning makeup artist behind Mrs. Doubtfire, these doubtful misfires can't pass as white or as chicks.

Flashy, forgettable fluff.

What once was a gifted comic's fluid improvisation is now a doddering old man so embarrassing he's uncomfortable to watch, and the surrogate father-daughter needling he has with Johansson is creepy when you realize Woody the director is shooting her seductively in that skintight bathing suit.

What little anti-war critique Peirce presents -- and she has it in her, which makes it all the more dubious -- gets trampled over by jingoistic Rambo porn.

Paycheck is a bogus journey.

The story is a vapid "Casablanca"-lite.

From an audience perspective, the title’s fairly apt as well.

Blunderingly out-of-touch, star-studded embarrassment of a sequel.

Chan still sounds silly talkin' jive, the action sequences are peppy if not exactly memorable, and the gags have been sitting out long enough to make penicillin.

Paths collide and allegiances form between the good, bad, and ugly, but under the incoherent direction of Chalerm Wongpim, a clunky dullness sets in whenever the action subsides.

A thin sprinkling of exuberance and a couple of choice cameos, that's about all this underwritten and overly choreographed spectacle has to tease us with.

What begins as a pleasantly utilitarian thriller gradually decays into a mediocre suspense drama and ends as an irritatingly feeble love story.

Since the conversation is unfocused and there's no real thesis, we get a girl and a gun but not really a movie.

Between the generic shadowy cinematography and a gothic score that manages to telegraph even the film's jump-scares, there's no tangible tension by which to build an effective climax.

Shallow, witless but pretty enough French ode to Woody Allen.

Self-taught Kurdish-American filmmaker Jano Rosebiani's mostly English-language drama...is deadened by milquetoast characters, uninspired landscape photography, and no perceptible stakes.

There's very little to distinguish this from every other characterless rom-com with a demographically marketable hook.

Overlong and slack in suspense, the film is most noteworthy for its patchy accents and the late Ellen Albertini Dow (the "rapping granny" from The Wedding Singer).

There's no bite to the criminality, the motives, the acting, or filmmaking to make us care.

There's no drama illustrating the thanklessness of their jobs, and potential wisdom about fiscal instability, animal welfare, or GMOs waft by without much argument.

No bodices were harmed in veteran French filmmaker Patrice Leconte's chaste and bloodless English-language debut.

It’s all rather implausible, as is how all those cinema luminaries Barenholtz once nurtured seem to have no impact on his style-free storytelling.

The filmmakers blend tones like a child mixing fountain drinks into one unidentifiable flavor.

Filmed in 2005, the first of two Cusack widower flicks this season (the weepier and more indie "Grace is Gone" hits theaters in December) Martian Child is also a Franken-schmaltz monster of cobbled-together Cusack movie parts.

A sadistically bland entertainment that oversells its reveals and lets its suspense drip so long that it would be nice if something (anything!) happened.

So go on, pay your ten bucks and get your hate on.

This terminally ill, terminally awful dramedy marks a sad cinematic milestone: The Bucket List is the first film in history to feature a truly wretched Nicholson performance -- and we're not talking about the character he plays.

This one's been sitting on shelves for two years -- never good news -- and you can almost see the dollar signs in the cast's eyes.

It’s terrible enough to torture the damned.

Not even within earshot of a masterpiece, Man on Fire, based on its ratio of production costs to quality alone, may prove to be the worst movie of 2004.

Fails in what amounts to its only distinct purpose: to smugly push the envelope of depravity farther than anyone else.

A clumsy, dreadfully preposterous and pedestrian thriller that seems to believe loud noises are the same as good frights.

Not to chastise the movie for simply being rude or crude -- since "The Wedding Crashers" proved that hormone-raging '80s throwbacks can still be harmless fun -- but this contemptible sex-com redux should be taken to task for how its infantilized yucks give license to entertaining closed-minded acceptances of very real human ugliness.

Lacks thrills, narrative, emotion, believability, character development--and frankly--watchability.

From less a purist's standpoint than a seeker of serviceable junk food, this comprehensive waste of time is too bouncy to be an "Elektra" bummer, but should make Marvel mascot Stan Lee think twice about burning another lucrative bridge with unintentional hilarity.

Filmmaker Maria Ilioú's uninspired flake of talking-head Wikipedia cinema focuses on the forgotten Anatolian port city's post-World War I years.

Director-producer Florian Steinbiss's German-set, largely German-cast comedy mixes genres with all the quality control of a fourth-grader dispensing every soda flavor into one cup.

It's an exploitation film that never gets its audience off, even with cheap thrills — what a dud.

Doesn't try to be anything more than a soft-serve pull of treacly pandering.

The overall comic premise is both clumsy and truly icky, because how exactly do you make progressive good on a "parody of violence against women" logline?

The final leg of director Cathy Garcia-Molina's exceptionally broad, partly English-dubbed cockles-warmer of a trilogy outright apes Hollywood rom-com formulas with a personality so affably lobotomized it wouldn't dare frighten delicate tastes.

Attempts to transform meet-cute romance into an absurdist fatal-attraction thriller, but ends up neither fish nor fowl.

Lazy, schmaltzy, and on-the-nose from its Hallmark-friendly production design to its rancid pop-music cues and naive dialogue.

Attempts to offer the white-knuckle gratifications of a studio procedural with a conspicuous lack of production values, screen talent, plausibility, originality, or a lick of aesthetic flair.

If cinema's most narcissistic actor-filmmakers were swimming in a talent pool, with Vincent Gallo confidently backstroking in the deep end and Eric Schaeffer wading in children's pee, Hendrickson's dipping his toe near Tommy Wiseau.

It's the very definition of direct-to-video schlock.

Canadian comedy hits rock bottom in this abhorrent meta-infomercial.