Andy Klein

Fails dramatically as well as ideologically.

All the new plot stuff is way old hat, as though straight from a textbook chapter called "Conflict Drives Your Narrative!" And at times the motivations are either unclear or senseless.

The underlying theme constantly changes shape, not in a way that seems rich in ambiguity, but in a way that seems poorly worked out.

More than just a disappointment. It is also a spoiler, possibly weakening the impact of "Silence" for its fans.

It's sweet and well intentioned, with occasional amusing moments.

With no aspects of the personalities represented outside of their music, Grateful Dawg ends up feeling dry and incomplete; its two subjects are stripped of all other characteristics and come across as not very interesting.

A mostly well-constructed action flick with a number of flashy, well-choreographed fight and chase scenes.

Goes by relatively swiftly and painlessly, despite the completely ragtag nature of its construction, but there is not an inspired moment in it.

It's not really a kids' film, nor it is particularly funny, by either design or execution. It is, rather, Columbus' latest attempt at a comically tinged tearjerker.

What's particularly scary about Hollywood Ending, however, is that its flaws are exactly the sort of problems that often afflict aging directors, flaws that we've never seen in Allen before -- bad comic timing, slack pacing, an unsteady control of tone, a reliance on jokes that have long since become clichés.

If a movie is going to be so totally derivative, it should at least do a better job of it.

I can’t imagine why anyone would plunge ahead with this project -- an adaptation of a classic no one reads, about characters no one could care about, directed by a filmmaker of little talent and less success.

The actors labor long and hard to bring some semblance of reality to the proceedings, but the whole affair has a distinctly faux '50s feel to it.

While the whole is diverting, the ending's utter repudiation of reality seems like pissing on the audience; -- we feel like we've been suckers for bothering to care about the characters at all.

Reasonably well-made and all, but it's simply too familiar, too derivative and too inferior to its predecessors to have any reason to exist.

Slips by quickly enough, but it never engages our interest more than passingly.

While the idea may be good, its execution is awful.

An amusing trifle. There are few comic staples less convincing or more timeworn than charming lunatics in love, and the only thing that lifts this film beyond TV-movie quality is Jones' performance.

This is after all a romantic comedy, not a romantic tragedy, though you might not realize it since it’s almost devoid of humor.

The film is overwrought, slow, and portentous, with confusing surreal elements and a narrative time scheme that's impossible to keep track of.

This really should have gone straight to video--or, better yet, to the nearest landfill.

While tyro director Simon West fills Con Air with all the slam-bang action and well-honed wisecracks that were the more positive qualities of its predecessors, the film brims even more with all their worst qualities.

With virtually no interesting elements for an audience to focus on, Chelsea Walls is a triple-espresso endurance challenge.

Hope Floats comes lumbering along, scourging all in its path with saccharine sentimentality and bogus emotions.

When emotion is called for, Cassavetes drags out every tear-jerking moment beyond the point of tolerability.

Nearly every attempt at humor in this witless, completely reprehensible "movie" is mean-spirited and stupidly conceived at the expense of some group that deserves better.

Boll uses a lot of quick cutting and blurry step-printing to goose things up, but dopey dialogue and sometimes inadequate performances kill the effect.

It doesn't add up to much more than a trifle that might have been more impressive as a short.