Andrea Gronvall

Director Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.) has a flair for action, which compensates for the flattening effect of Gabriel Beristain's cinematography.

Samson Chan's color-saturated visuals add punch to the absorbing narrative, but overall this documentary plays like slickly packaged TV fare, right down to the plugs for Nike.

The travelogue sequences indicate how widely Middle Eastern cultures vary, but there are few revealing personal encounters in this well-intentioned but minor film.

The European actors (especially Sartor) give commendably realistic performances, but the film suffers from an episodic script, which contributes to the sense of anticlimax when the battle finally arrives.

A major star in Mexico, Bichir is quietly affecting as the father, a humble striver who faces loss at every turn.

Director Cherie Nowlan steers the comedy to a feel-good ending.

Writer-director Spencer Susser and cowriter David Michod (Animal Kingdom) generate fresh hells at a surreally rapid clip but cop out with an incongruously sentimental ending.

Nothing much is original in this soggy tale of two German women whose friendship persists despite adversity and their own bad choices.

Director Jacques-Remy Girerd often divides the frame into three vertical bands, each with a different color signature; this dynamic technique makes the eventual introduction of explosive action sequences seem like overkill.

The humor loses momentum as the cleric shuns her advances, and the action grows frenetic following the arrival of his twin brother, a macho general.

Shana Feste's screenplay seldom rises above the level of daytime TV; the only actor who triumphs over her trite dialogue is Tim McGraw in a nonsinging role as Paltrow's husband and manager.

In this uneven Disney comedy Adam Sandler tones down his arrested-development persona, trading crass humor for warm fuzzies.

This forceful expose shows how area residents are fighting to keep their beloved Coal Mountain pristine, but filmmaker Bill Haney allots too much screen time to environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and barely any to the urban consumers in distant states whose thirst for cheap electric power is part of the problem.

In place of the sharply etched observational humor of the original, which featured a host of no-name actors in memorably quirky performances, we now get mostly raunch and some flaccid cameos from Smith cronies Ben Affleck and Jason Lee.

This fusty sequel lacks the narrative complexity of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and squanders both its first-rate computer graphics and its sturdy international cast.

Among the other characters are an African-American TV writer (Kali Hawk) who hates black people and a widower (Erik Palladino) who stumbles onto a kidnapping case. The latter development provides the film with a denouement that's dramatically valid if overly neat.

As in many nature films, the ostensible subjects are less captivating than their scenic backdrops.

The physical stunts by Maggie Q as a lethal martial arts expert and Cyril Raffaelli as a Eurotrash sniper who rappels buildings are more thrilling than the over-the-top chase sequences, so contrived as to verge on self-parody.

Of some interest for promoting rapprochement between India and China, this is still awfully silly.

The families' hopes for a tasteful, upscale wedding are sabotaged by warring egos and low-rent, walking-stereotype relatives.

Writer-director J.J. Abrams overloads this sci-fi adventure with so many homages to his co-producer Steven Spielberg that it plays like the elder director's greatest hits, minus his characteristic scares and sense of wonder.

Chan shows he still has the chops during a showdown at the Eiffel Tower, but you'd think the movie's reported budget of $140 million might have bought Tucker at least one side-splitting gag.

Kurt Russell and Kris Kristofferson, both graceful and naturalistic actors, are the best things going in this formulaic drama.

A murky screenplay leaves most of the humans ciphers, save for Hal Holbrook in an exquisitely calibrated performance as the avuncular desert retiree whose advice McCandless should have heeded.

This is well staged and photographed, with stirring aerial images and balletic pans and dolly shots, but the story is muddled by the arrival of a free-spirited girl and her musician pals, 60s-style longhairs battling a government conspiracy.

Earns points for its set and sound design, eerily desaturated color palette, able cast, and one really good special effect. Sadly, the movie just doesn't deliver chills.

Harrison Ford carries this talky, formulaic thriller by virtue of his authority, culled from years in front of the camera, but his performance can't obscure the obvious plot machinations.

The original movie's lean production complemented its pell-mell fights and car chases; here, third-rate CG effects make the strained action sequences look even more improbable.

A tired, generic crime story.

Zwick, intent on correcting the perception of Jews as passive victims, lets the action set pieces overwhelm the more intimate scenes, several of which are already diminished by stilted dialogue.

The end, a drawn-out death scene, is manipulative and, contrary to the movie's feel-good marketing, likely to upset youngsters.

May be a good showcase for James Franco, who's in every scene, but it's a disappointing choice for director Justin Lin.

Writer-director Wil Shriner tends to sit on almost every shot, killing any comic momentum (sequences with Luke Wilson as a dim-bulb cop are particularly witless), and ominous scenes involving cottonmouths and Rottweilers are glibly resolved.

The darker aspects of tribalism come under scrutiny here as nonconformists (unmarried men, women alone) are shown being marginalized.

Likable as she is, Latifah can't overcome a tortured mistaken-identity plot, buffoonery on the ski slopes, and enough saccharine dialogue to induce shock.

Bitchy cheerleaders and swimming pool catfights are just two of the tedious cliches propping up this brittle comedy.

It loses steam once the wraiths become fully visible: they're just not scary enough.

So clinically detached it borders on absurd.

Strains so hard to be upbeat you can almost hear gears shifting.

Thankyoubutnomoreplease.

Queen Latifah's warmth has boosted middling movies like "Beauty Shop" and "Last Holiday," but she and costar Common can't strike enough sparks to ignite this weak romantic comedy.

Bloated with visual effects, this sequel to the 2006 hit starts off slowly, reintroducing the original characters.

Horror maestro Christophe Gans ("Brotherhood of the Wolf") directed this feature, worth seeing for the zombie nurses who gyrate like a Bob Fosse chorus line before slicing each other to ribbons.

Too archly scripted to appeal to kids and too crudely executed to win over older aficionados. The cheap-looking CGI makes the animals creepy rather than engaging, and a plot thread about a series of thefts does little more than spin the tale to feature length.

The movie relies on the notion that postponing sex heightens arousal, but its lovers aren't any better matched post-coitus than they were before.

The movie is essentially a pastiche, as musty as a flea market.

The insipid gags fail to exploit Murphy's gift for physical humor, Elizabeth Banks and Gabrielle Union are merely decorative, and Ed Helms (The Office), playing a character called #2, looks appropriately constipated.

The slapstick is funnier for the nifty CGI, and the script gets in some sly digs at racist cops and multitasking soccer moms.

This dyspeptic 2003 coming-of-age story from Italy often seems on the verge of nervous collapse, veering from giddy adolescent romps to adult shenanigans and shrill political discord.

Playing a competitive schemer not unlike her "Desperate Housewives" character, Parker doesn't generate much heat, while Rudd is squandered in a bland role.

How can a romantic drama tailor-made for Julia Roberts from Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir about self-actualization--shot against alluring locales in Italy, India, and Bali, and directed by the acclaimed Ryan Murphy (TV's Nip/Tuck and Glee)--go so ass-numbingly wrong?

The exotic plant and animal life is enhanced by the 3D process--which makes the two-dimensional screenplay all the more disappointing. With its weighty dialogue the movie becomes depressing well before the final violent showdown.

Paul Bartel's "Death Race 2000" is a beloved camp item, but this slick, loud, violent remake is pitched at the video game crowd.

Platinum-selling singer Usher is one hell of a clotheshorse, but he's too amiable to be convincing as a leading man--not that anyone is particularly believable in this feeble comedy.

Ryan, barely refining her "When Harry Met Sally" persona, is a dud; Annette Bening, playing the best friend who sells her out to a tabloid, is better in the scenes she doesn't share with her.

Years on the Hannah Montana TV series have not adequately prepared Miley Cyrus for screen acting.

To call this Kevin James comedy fatuous might be misinterpreted as an attack on the star's girth--so how about inane, tepid, lazy, puerile, phony, and unfunny?

It's not scary because not one second is believable.

This bloated 2006 historical epic flatlines early and never regains a pulse.

Stunning vistas of New Zealand's rolling countryside aren't enough to carry this lame 2006 horror spoof.

Costars John Cleese, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, and Jeremy Irons look either bored or desperate, gasping for laughs in an airless screenplay.

Williams's overacting, Russell's pinched melancholy, and Highmore's unflagging chirpiness would be trying enough on their own, but the convoluted story, with its pileup of obstacles and coincidences, makes this sophomore effort by director Kirsten Sheridan (Disco Pigs) an exercise in dissonance.

As an actor Austin is still a lightweight, but Rick Hoffman (Hostel) fleshes out a recognizable character.

The special effects are better and the dialogue slightly more humorous than in the first movie, but the anti-Arab subtext is repugnant.

Inexplicably, Butler continues to get work in romantic comedies despite his limited range and boorish persona.

Equally as offensive as the movie's smorgasbord of smut and violence is the lingering whiff of colonial-era orientalism, a Western predilection for regarding Eastern cultures as innately idle, lascivious, and irrational, and thus ripe for intervention.

Al Pacino chews up so much scenery it's surprising there's any left by the end of this fetid thriller.

This movie is too pedestrian for camp, and too scattershot for an action comedy.

Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes.

The set-up is tediously slow, while the later murders are packed so tightly it's like watching a blender on high speed.

Loosely adapted from Alex Flinn's young-adult novel, this "Beauty and the Beast" update is a pallid, formulaic teen romance that might have benefited from a little snark.

Not a movie, just one gigantic commercial for Hasbro.

With artifice as layered as the tiers of a marzipan cake, this resembles nothing so much as a stale Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedy.

Pretentious and dull, this Uruguayan exercise in magical realism takes place during the annual carnival in Montevideo.

The movie not only indicts the country's embrace of capitalism by showing how low people will sink to make money, it also denigrates the agrarian class--once celebrated as heroic under Mao--by portraying its members as illiterate barbarians concerned only with continuing their family lines.

Even likable star Zach Braff can't salvage this clunker.

The little heroes and their families are surprisingly ugly, with faces resembling skulls, and the colors are so faded and muddy the movie feels tired and bungled.

Director Paul Morrison forfeits any meaningful statement about art for a pedestrian coming-out story, based in part on Dali's unreliable, self-aggrandizing memoirs.

Too slavish in its devotion to 50s sci-fi conventions to work as parody or camp, this indie comedy by "The X-Files" alumnus R.W. Goodwin sinks under the weight of its homage.

Although their love is undeniably a blessing, I was disconcerted watching the elderly couple smile and chuckle today as they recall their daily letters and secret meetings in the midst of such wide-scale death.

Cowriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (Gladiator) saddle Neeson with indigestible dialogue and preposterous situations.

The story unfolds briskly in the polished mode of a classic horror movie, then tanks after a plot twist at the midpoint alters the mood and slows the pace. Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father) directed an ill-conceived screenplay that could have worked only as camp.

Josh Duhamel plays the smitten sports reporter who helps her mount her big art show, "Pain"--a fitting title, given the agony induced by this godawful comedy.

Overblown and stupefyingly dull.

Bob DeRosa and Ted Griffin wrote the script, whose plummeting one-liners leave no actor unscathed.

As usual, Cage alternates between leaden line readings and thunderous outbursts, making his accomplished costars Ulrich Thomsen and Stephen Campbell Moore look even better.

The dialogue is often grating, and some of the situations are distastefully cute, although John Carroll Lynch (Fargo) has a strong supporting turn as a grief workshop client.

Too low-key and amiable to match the lubriciousness Jim Carrey brought to the original.

The resulting mix of hagiography and war epic is so muddled that characters keep addressing each other by their first names, the better to tell them apart.

Throughout most of her career Diane Keaton has shown sound instincts, so it's a mystery why she failed to sniff this false, brittle comedy out as a waste of her gifts.

The kids are impressively plucky, but Weihenmayer comes off as an egomaniac, arguing with his team and endangering the youngsters' lives. Lucy Walker directed this cloying and manipulative 2006 documentary.

In middle age Jackie Chan can't keep coasting on boyish charm, as evidenced by this dreadful family comedy that does him no favors with its opening title sequence.

A more helpful title for this date movie would have been Couples, Retreat!

This Mike Myers vehicle exemplifies American comedy's continuing slide into infantilism.

"Soppy" doesn't begin to describe this 2004 drama by Quentin Lee.

The high school is so sanitized that there are no drugs, cutthroat competition, or--inconceivably for a theatrical milieu--no gay students.

With its hypnotic pacing, blatantly nonsynchronous sound, clunky robot costumes, and graphic but unconvincing violence, the movie falls flatly between camp and art-house pretension.

For a movie about the undead, this lacks any supernatural chills, and by the time its obligatory final showdown arrives, it seems as hollow as the terra cotta soldiers brought to life by CGI.