Ann Hornaday

The Loss of Sexual Innocence is belabored, pretentious and often willfully opaque. [25 Jun 1999]

A movie that possesses the stylized, lethal-Looney-Tunes slapstick we’ve come to associate with Coenesque humor, as well as the fiery, thinly disguised polemic of such past Clooney projects as “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

Okay, the concept for the movie is admittedly lame, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with watching a passel of adorable pooches wrinkle their brows and bark while human voices come out of their mouths.

But despite doing its best to jiggle, giggle and ogle its way into a niche somewhere between "Heathers" and "American Pie," it becomes just another forgettable pastiche of sight gags and pop-culture references.

Possesses its share of modest laughs, many of them delivered by Ted Danson as Bridget's bemused husband. But director Callie Khouri (best known for writing "Thelma & Louise") doesn't bring the dash needed to make this a comic heist on a par with "Ocean's Eleven."

Cinderella, the latest of countless adaptations of the centuries-old rags-to-riches story, is far less interested in enchantment than in dismantling the entire sexist, classist racket.

The loudest, trashiest, stupidest, cheesiest celebration of ritualized male aggression of 2004.

Less intriguingly convoluted than concussed into lifelessness, “Marlowe” is the cinematic equivalent of a word salad: It parrots all the right lines while striking all the right poses, without saying much of anything at all.

Like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Holliday before him, Tatum is sublime at playing dumb (as a dim pretty boy, he seems to be channeling Brad Pitt in "Burn After Reading"), just as Hill shrewdly deploys his body mass for maximum physical comedy (even slimmed down, with an Oscar nomination under that tightened belt, he carries himself with a fat man's comically elephantine grace).

It's Walken who grounds every scene with the kind of watchful honesty that has become his brand in late-career.

Lovely to look at and listen to but doesn't reward any closer study.

Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan are the nominal stars of First Sunday, but it's Katt Williams who steals the show in this by turns trite and mildly amusing B-comedy.

Olympus Has Fallen at least possesses the frisson of timeliness amid otherwise hoary action-movie cliches.

Like its own protagonists, Kick-Ass 2 can’t decide what it wants to be when it grows up: a vessel for unhinged vengeance and destruction or a meta-critique of those same impulses. In going for both, it winds up being neither.

Moormann deserves credit, not only for choosing a wonderful and deserving subject for a film, but for doing him proud.

A pleasantly seedy crime thriller.

Owen Wilson phones it in with Drillbit Taylor, a by-the-numbers teen comedy.

The Woman in the Window is the kind of film that could go places, but sadly never manages to get out the door.

A bawdy, brainy sex comedy geared toward smart people with a sophomoric streak.

Tyldum...isn’t a dynamic stylist as much as a competent executor of what’s on the page. He gets Passengers to where it needs to go, which is a resolution in keeping with a movie that wants to have its cake and eat it too, no matter how much credibility it strains, or how many political and ethical quandaries it elides.

Dogs and the women who love them form the warm and gooey center of Darling Companion, Lawrence Kasdan's fitfully amusing comedy-drama.

A throwback to 1970s blaxploitation flicks, with a Latin accent, Illegal Tender would be a brassy, sassy guilty pleasure if it were more, well, pleasurable.

As earnest as the performances are, something seems to be lost in the translation.

There are moments when the fanfic speculations of “Come Away” feel too forced and downright cockamamie; the plot, probably inevitable, becomes schematic and the near-constant state of magical thinking too sticky-sweet for words. But the enterprise is ennobled by Chapman's sense of style and a consistently strong set of performances, especially from Jolie and Oyelowo.

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.

A sweet, even delectable diversion from the more explosive cinematic fare of the season.

Filmworker is a tribute to the unsung artisans, assistants, best boys and girl Fridays whose indelible contributions make movies not just possible, but magical.

Although her charisma is still undeniable, there’s also no denying that McCarthy is capable of much more than she’s allowing herself to do here. There comes a point when every force of nature starts to look just plain forced.

Even at its lamest and most entitled, this sequel will most likely please fans of the first installment, chiefly because Bateman, Sudeikis and Day are, admittedly, often very funny together.

Nightwatch is passable stuff for undiscriminating fans of the ickier-the-better genre; for the rest of us, it offers nothing new. [17 Apr 1998]

He has a knack for creating vivid characters even in the briefest of vignettes in his live act, many of which are taken from his life, growing up poor in Greenbelt.

Overstuffed, overlong and utterly uninvolving, this is a movie that feels as morbidly trapped as the poor little bird of its title. Rather than spread its wings and fly free, it stays frustratingly, eternally inert.

Intriguing, if uneven, thriller.

An inert, sloppily written melodrama as grim and featureless as its frozen Midwestern setting.

Somewhere on the incoherent pu pu platter that is Cameron Crowe’s Aloha, a nifty romantic comedy congeals and shrivels, inexplicably untouched.

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.

Jack Frost can't possibly straddle its emotional shifts between morbidity and sheer nonsense. [11 Dec 1998]

Although the new version, which stars Keanu Reeves, is likely to make audiences pine for the meta-irony of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," it's not a complete failure.

Giamatti provides those small moments of triumph that Duets pretends to celebrate but instead stifles with its sense of superiority.

As it is, the audience must content itself with baby poop, naughty words and the female anatomy at its pneumatic extreme, while Bateman and Reynolds's search for transcendence continues.

Has its modest charms.

Sloppy compendium of filthy jokes and lowbrow sight gags.

That none of the protagonists earns the audience's sympathy is more likely a failure of the real-life characters rather than the actors, who deliver fine performances -- especially Rhys, who seems to be channeling Richard Burton channeling Dylan Thomas at his most manipulatively loutish.

Unfortunately, Provoked possesses the tiny production values and schmaltzy music of a prime-time special, despite its ensemble of terrific actors.

Indeed it looks as if this otherwise straight-to-video endeavor, which was made in 2003, is being released only to cash in on Bernal's of-the-moment-ness in Hollywood.

The Gunman may start as a genre exercise of promising purpose, but it winds up being just a lot of bull.

Anemic, pretentious.

It's trivial and narcissistic and ultimately rather sordid.

Although The Other Woman nibbles around the edges of revealing truths about relationships, it leaves most of that potential behind, instead pursuing easy, exhausted cliches about zip-less marriages, upper class suburban drudgery, cynical careerism and dumb-but-sweet blondes.

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

Tammy is a bummer, not least because McCarthy’s fans know she’s better than this.

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.

Threatens to become a serious movie, but they're quickly overwhelmed by another indecipherable rampage or outsize visual effect.

Piven is so in the pocket as the smarmy, aggressive, inappropriate Ari that, when the movie he’s in does little more than double down on the bro-ing out, the whiffed opportunities become all the more obvious.

A retread of material already thoroughly plumbed by Martin Scorsese.

Uma Thurman delivers a mesmerizing performance in The Life Before Her Eyes, a film that, once seen and fully digested, exerts the same haunting pull as the shattering events it chronicles.

The November Man turns out to be the classic August movie: a triumph of competence over imagination and schlock over taste. Its highest value lies in reminding filmgoers that fall can’t come too soon.

Character-rich, but plot-poor.

A tame, fitfully amusing and generally inoffensive romantic comedy.

Think Like a Man Too, the derivative, intermittently amusing follow-up to the surprise hit rom-com from 2012, is so frenetically paced and hysterically pitched that it makes almost no room for simple enjoyment.

A picaresque romance of self-discovery that delivers a near-constant flow of small delights until veering too far into screwball preposterousness.

Reiner assembles a square meal of rom-com pleasure points, but it’s bland, by-the-numbers and not particularly memorable.

So cheesy and cheap that it almost attains high camp.

Most of the humor in The Pink Panther derives from Martin's silly French accent, especially when he tries to pronounce the word "hamburger." But zat joke, she ees not funny. And The Pink Panther ees, how you say, ze real dog.

As is true with so much of Haggis’s work, Third Person suffers from an airless, too-neat lack of connection with organic life.

To its credit, Men, Women & Children seems to allow for a rational middle ground between technophobic Luddites and the lamentably over-wired. It never turns down the moral panic entirely, but neither does it let it completely boil over.

As Crossing Over makes its patronizing points, by way of two-dimensional characters and billboarded plot points, it recalls other, better movies that dealt with the same subjects far more deftly.

Just another tepid entry into this year's Death-as-Turn-On Sweepstakes.

An unsurprising, undistinguished piece of post-summer, pre-holiday detritus.

Visually undistinguished, narratively inert, populated by a cast of charmless child actors, "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," with any luck will fade quickly from theaters, memories and Rodriguez's own Things to Do Today list.

Adore at its core is a bore, nothing more.

Whether or not it's crucial for the gay community to have its own "Porky's" is a question for the ages; but please, not Another Gay Movie.

Don’t expect to see a great film, or even a very good one. Whether you discover a meaningful channel with which to continue your walk with the film’s protagonist, however, is strictly between you and your god.

It's like a ferret on crystal meth that belatedly discovers ecstasy, and it's a tiresome trip either way.

This mishmash of styles, genres and tonal shifts makes for a dizzying pastiche best described in terms of the many movies it references throughout its nearly 2 1/2-hour running time, from “Little Big Man,” Buster Keaton’s “The General” and the Monument Valley-set canon of John Ford to “Dead Man,” “Rango” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

The movie winds up a casualty of schmaltzy, patronizing sentiment on the one hand and overweening ambition on the other.

Fanaro's script never really hones in on the concept's potential.

A film that, in attempting to ridicule the Bush administration, finally just settles for being ridiculous itself.

It evokes a warmed-over Fox TV special.

A grisly, depraved and wholly uninvolving exercise in empty mannerism.

The most objectionable thing about Only God Forgives isn’t that it’s shocking or immoral, but that it’s so finally, fatally dull.

If you're looking for some good family interspecies entertainment, take the little ones to see "Stuart Little 2" again; in the meantime, you might want to crawl into your cave and sleep through this one.

Never makes the Jordans' tribulations feel like anything more than yuppie angst.

A thinly written, hoarily cliched story that serves mostly as connective tissue between the movie's chief draw, its dazzling dance sequences.

Chances are, after they've passed the two-hour mark, viewers will share the same collective, if unspoken, wish: Go, Speed Racer. Go.

Conceived and directed by Madonna, W.E. is a gorgeous mess.

Why -- when there are so many funnier, smarter, more gifted performers who can't get arrested in Hollywood -- why, for the love of all that's good and holy, does Martin Lawrence get to keep making movies?

A boilerplate melodrama whose good guys and bad guys are so baldly drawn they could have been conceived by Friz Freleng.

It will all look pretty ridiculous to grown-ups, but to 13-year-old boys (and adults with well-tended inner versions thereof), Biker Boyz will be the perfect testosterone-fueled, flash-edited, music-driven joy ride.

Rarely has an actress exuded such blank nothingness as Simpson, a one-woman vapid delivery system who sucks the energy and joy out of every scene she's in, like some freakishly well-endowed black hole.

John C. McGinley from "Scrubs" gets to strut some of his comic stuff as the deranged builder, but he's the only passable feature in a property that should be condemned.

Even though it earns an R rating for profanity and some risque material, it’s too meek and mild-mannered to qualify as brave, or even slyly subversive.

It's lame, corny, Ed Woodishly amateurish -- all of which is as lovable as the big lug himself.

The best thing about awkward moments, after all, is that they usually pass quickly. And, blessedly, just as swiftly forgotten.

The wanton fabulistas of Party Monster are as boring and insignificant as the very "normals and drearies" they so contemptuously deride.

The film might take its name from poker subculture, but it lacks all the urgency, single-mindedness and swiftness that the title implies at its most literal. Runner Runner is a bummer. Bummer.

The movie has been made with consummate carelessness but with occasional moments of knowing humor.

The Watch takes the same ethos of male bonding, obsession with sex and sardonic violence that has proved so profitable in recent years on yet another summer spin. The tires may be in need of changing pretty soon, but for now the jalopy still runs.

Although audiences will admire the film's do-it-yourself energy and commitment, Poster Boy finally collapses of its own contrived weight, deflating just when it should soar into madcap -- or at least thoughtful -- satire.

Full of incident, heartbreak, secrets and betrayal, The Affair and its choppy formal structure don’t do justice to an enormously appealing cast.

A mean-hearted, ham-handed and gratuitous effort to exploit it's teenage audience's conviction that, underneath it all, their teachers really. do hate them.

It's difficult to know whom to root for.

Will prove infectious to those audiences who find themselves sharing the director's frivolous frame of mind.

Jigh class briefly gives way to high camp, which then itself dissipates to an anticlimactic thud.

Brain-softener.

Although there are genuine moments of humor, they’re at odds with the increasingly ghastly measures taken by the three protagonists, as they succumb to power-hunger, paranoia and overkill.

A special place in purgatory must be reserved for John Leguizamo, who produced and stars in The Babysitters, a loathsome slice of exploitation at its most cynical and crass.

McCarthy’s willingness to go to the mat notwithstanding, it’s viewers who are likely left feeling punched in the gut.

As a straightforward biopic of a woman whose name is much better known than her story, “Cabrini” fulfills its mission with the same purposeful earnestness of its subject. It’s a movie even the most secular of humanists can love.

If Simon's desire to feed the better angels of our nature is admirable, it would be nice if he could do it with better movies.

With its incomprehensible plot, flat visual style and indecipherably mixed messages (violence is good; no, wait, violence is bad!), this movie seems chiefly to be an excuse to sell even more trading cards.

Self/less bears not a trace of Singh’s signature visual richness, quickly devolving into a tiresome game of cat and mouse, padded with cliched fight scenes, car chases and shootouts.

Regardless of the cute little hats and clam-diggers she wears, it's impossible to believe Kidman as a breathless ingenue; that relentless drive and steely Kidmanesque determination keep jutting through the cotton in flinty, sharp-edged shards.

A predictable and outlandishly contrived take on the Pygmalion myth.

It's perfectly palatable family fare for a long weekend.

Ferrell and Hart have a genial, easygoing chemistry and Get Hard manages to score more than a few good points about facile assumptions and toxic hypocrisy.

As little as there is to recommend in Scooby-Doo 2, it must be noted that the human cast has done an uncanny job of inhabiting their two-dimensional characters.

Glossy, flossy and blithely secure in its own cheerfully fake worldview, Baggage Claim bypasses the intellect entirely, happy to satisfy on a silly, screwball, wish-fulfillment level. It could have been so much better, but for racking up undemanding escapist flyer miles, it’ll do.

Idiotic, ugly and ridiculous.

One part Joseph Campbell hero quest, one part multi-culti morality tale, one part live-action "Flintstones" cartoon, 10,000 B.C. is finally every part just plain nuts, from a hike featuring more ecosystems than an Al Gore documentary to a wacky climax set amid pyramids that -- you'll e-mail me if I'm wrong -- wouldn't have been built for another 7,000 years or so.

Lazily written by Stiller and three collaborators (including Justin Theroux), this is the kind of lame, warmed-over movie that gives sequels a bad name. For “Zoolander” fans, however, it resembles a betrayal of public trust.

Safe Haven is one of those Valentine’s Day confections that satisfy your sweet tooth until you get to their weird, off-putting center. The problem with movies is that you can’t put them back in the box.

A sweet and hilarious romantic comedy featuring a breakout performance by British comic genius Ricky Gervais, inspires viewers to pause, reflect and praise one of the most rare and wondrous occurrences in contemporary cinema: the Good Movie.

A movie marred by a flaccid script, listless pacing, a plethora of cutesy-poo gags and Ray Romano.

The movie isn't only boring; it's troubling:

What it possesses in heart and goodwill, it sorely lacks in narrative skill and artistic depth.

An egregiously unfunny enterprise.

Ends up being more about her hair (Meg Ryan's) than anything else.

Aside from Cedric's admittedly appealing persona -- he's always watchable, even in dreck like this -- there's absolutely nothing to recommend The Cleaner.

Only fitfully funny, and it makes up for what it lacks in genuine humor by overdosing viewers with outrageous sexuality and outsize stereotypes.

It wants us to believe that being popular and getting the cutest guy in school really is the key to happiness. Like, how totally last century is that?

The effect isn't just frenetic, unfunny and dull. It's kind of creepy.

Both a snore and utter tripe.

A fascinating, vexing, indulgent, visionary, pretentious, mesmerizing pop culture curio.

Propelled by an ingenious script by Aaron Sorkin, given vibrance and buoyancy by director Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs is a galvanizing viewing experience.

A stunningly inert piece of cinema, a movie that basically boils down to serial shots of people talking to each other.

A piece of holiday cheese that even Harry & David wouldn't touch.

From its very first scene, Untraceable isn't the sophisticated, brainy thriller it so nearly could have been, but just another movie about a serial murderer.

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.

One of those cinematic curiosities that almost always fade quickly, but that will usually find a devoted cult audience once it hits that peculiar Elysian Field known as the aftermarket.

The Road possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions.

To call Lawrence a poor man's Richard Pryor libels not just Pryor but also the 33 million Americans currently living under the poverty line.

There isn’t one joke, sight gag or piece of slapstick tomfoolery that lands with any success or originality in Hot Pursuit.

To his (Snipes) credit, there are few other stars who could breathe a degree of credibility into a film like The Art of War.

It's lewd, crude and socially irredeemable.

It's just another modest, unsurprising little heist flick. So why is it so much fun? Newman.

Grown Ups finds Sandler reverting to lunkheaded, lazy-laff form.

It’s a shame that the beginning of a movement that has come so far, so fast has been reduced to a trite, calculatingly manipulative reenactment.

The story of the triumphant underdog is irresistible, even when every single plot point comes marching down Main Street.

The most misguided, ill-conceived and lamentable film.

Johnson and Wayans are both gifted comic performers but are given way too little to do in a film that wends its way from set piece to set piece, not with antic glee but desultory and-then-this-happens randomness.

Sandra Bullock is a disheveled, grumpy, adorable mess in Premonition, a psychological thriller that was no doubt pitched as "Medium," only longer and brunette. Or maybe "The Eternal Sixth Sense of the Spotless Groundhog Day."

One part historical drama and one part futuristic adventure, Timeline resembles a "Star Trek" episode by way of "Scooby-Doo."

A hackneyed psycho-sexual thriller with enough awkwardly executed Hitchcock references to qualify as a bad DePalma knock-off.

Indeed, I'd say Undiscovered belongs on the WB, but that would be gravely unfair to the channel, which looks like the BBC in comparison.

Creepy, creepy, creepy -- and not in a good way.

A lurid, loopy, utterly ludicrous enterprise.

It Works.

Busy, over-stylized mess of a movie.

Both assaultive and tiresome, A Good Day to Die Hard barely registers on the action movie Richter scale. It goes bang, it goes boom, and then it blessedly goes away.

Doesn't orchestrate the scares with much finesse.

Indeed, Scream is better than the average slasher film, as its advertisers insist. And, indeed, it is probably Wes Craven's best film, as they also insist. But that is a little like saying the pimple on the left side of your nose is "better" than the pimple on the right side.

You know a movie is in trouble when its biggest laughs come not from its lead players but from a dog and a car

Winds up answering the question of what "Shrek" hath wrought, and between its plastic-looking visuals and cynical attitude, the news isn't good. Lacking the genuine wit and humanism of that film and any number of forebears, this one deserves its dumpin'.

A tired piece of hackery, made only slightly less distasteful by a couple of inspired moments from supporting player Alan Cumming.

Bland, workmanlike and instantly forgettable.

The biggest sin of Sex and the City 2 is its lack of beauty. It's garish when it should be sumptuous, tacky when it should be luxe, wafer-thin when it should be whip-smart and sophisticated.

Tries desperately to lower the bar for scatological gags, rank sexual humor and cheap physical shots.

Dragged down by a paper-thin story, the predictable number of fight scenes executed at equally predictable intervals and stock, unmemorable characters.

The tale grows only more toxic with time.

When a Stranger Calls never manages to convey the primal, almost atavistic terror that has earned John Carpenter's movies and the "Scream" franchise their places in the teen horror canon. The most lasting psychological effect of this pulp non-classic will most likely be limited to a deep pathological fear of Architectural Digest.

A dreary, dismally unfunny excuse for a romantic comedy.

This smart, fanciful and brilliantly staged comedy takes a truly one-of-a-kind premise and makes it, of all things, a weirdly profound meditation on consciousness, identity, fame, gender and reality.

A nasty, formulaic and unforgivably obvious procedural.

What the filmmakers try to play for laughs -- a mom and her daughters chatting about orgasms while shoe shopping -- isn't funny, it's creepy.

Rarely has an act of such cinematic cruelty as Tideland been perpetrated on filmgoers.

A murder caper that could have been written by Agatha Christie during a pub-crawl.

[A] strained, clunkily orchestrated and dismally retrograde film.

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.

Leaden, laugh-free, lacking anything resembling a heart, mind or soul.

Predictable, lazy and as overprocessed as Kate Hudson's hair, this thoroughly joyless movie also possesses a deep nasty streak, making it loathsome when it might have been merely annoying.

How can we make the entire movie disappear?

The less said the better.

Not good enough to qualify as classic Gothic horror, not nearly fun enough to qualify as great B-movie camp.

Lowbrow humor is one thing...but Love Stinks sinks the bar beyond comprehension.

Behind all the noisemakers and funny glasses, New Year's Eve - and everyone in it - is dead behind the eyes.

To call it sophomoric would libel even the most pathetic, pimply underclassman.

Goes straight to hell, and in this case it is its own handbasket.

Much of what's offensive and insufferable about All About Steve can be laid at the feet of screenwriter Kim Barker, best known for inflicting "License to Wed" on the world. Why do these people still earn obscene amounts of money churning out dreck? And why do stars like Bullock keep paying them?

A depraved, incoherent, instantly disposable piece of hackery.

Supremely idiotic.

As an exercise in sincerity, fellowship and earnest inquiry, it might be the most subversive movie in circulation right now.

Director Pedro Kos makes lively use of archival footage and animation in Rebel Hearts, but the stars are the women themselves.