Ann Hornaday

It's a bloated, shockingly tedious trudge that manages to look both overproduced and unforgivably cheesy.

Overblown sanctimony and sentimentalism as corny as the Fourth of July.

A dog-frequency movie: enjoyable only to those tuned in to its particular register.

An uninteresting take on a tired formula that is only occasionally funny and usually pretty gross.

Slick, sick, self-consciously stylish and defiantly shallow, Gangster Squad is one of those movies you can't talk about without invoking other (often better) movies. A lot of movies.

First-time director Anne Sewitsky may intend Happy, Happy as a Chekhovian chamber piece or romantic bagatelle, but her smugness about racism - and her glib symbolic resolution of the conflicts she raises - suggests an ambition that far outstrips her ability, at least for now.

An only fitfully engaging L.A. soap opera.

Brain-softener.

Busy, over-stylized mess of a movie.

This fitfully funny but mostly dull misfire defines exactly where the line can be drawn between truly subversive humor and lazy cynicism.

A jagged little pill of a movie from baby boomer avatar Edward Zwick.

Offers jaw-dropping visuals, but its troubling images of violence may cause this revolutionary effort to miss the evolutionary boat.

Director Scott Hicks lavishes good taste and sunsets on a story that - devoid of genuine tension, conflict or combustible chemistry between its two stars - just prettily sits there.

(Perry and Willis) are blown off the screen by Amanda Peet and Natasha Henstridge.

There's very little that's even kind of funny in It's Kind of a Funny Story, which can't accurately be described as a comedy but isn't a true drama, either.

As this sloppy, scattered, utterly synthetic piece of Hollywood widgetry unspools, it becomes increasingly clear that the romantic tension at play exists mostly between the men in question.

Michael Caine delivers a stunning performance in Harry Brown, a rancid little revenge fantasy that probably doesn't deserve him.

That Winterbottom has delivered a dud makes Trishna all the more disappointing, a rare unsatisfying swerve from an otherwise reliably provocative career.

Of Madonna's considerable talents, making the camera love her isn't one: The screen seems to go dead every time she's on it.

With a grating combination of naivete and arrogance, The Green Mile consistently overplays its melodramatic material, including a portrait of a black man that is as breathtakingly offensive as it is earnest.

If Shutter Island, a gothic thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, were put to a free association test, the word most likely to come to mind would certainly be "weird."

Bullock's character goes through some changes, but she never turns into some unrecognizably serious actress.

One of the weaknesses of The Sitter is that Hill doesn't develop much comic chemistry with the children.

Dark Shadows doesn't know where it wants to dwell: in the eerie, subversive penumbra suggested by its title or in playful, go-for-broke camp.

Little more than an electronic press kit for the band, produced for the benefit of its fans.

Man on a Ledge has its diverting moments, but by the time it has reached its too-pat final twist, it turns out to be a title desperately in search of a movie.

There's less here than meets the eye, not to mention the ear, nose, tongue and fingertip.

Rock of Ages gets too mired in plotty cul de sacs, manufactured setbacks and numbers that are all staged as show-stoppers. In the words of the Journey song that serves as a climactic singalong, it goes on and on and on and on.