A.O. Scott

What is harder to comprehend is how Mr. Clooney turned out such a sloppy, haphazard and tonally incoherent piece of work. Leatherheads lurches hectically between Coen brothers-style pastiche and John Saylesian didacticism, while Mr. Clooney works his brow and his jaw and waits in vain for his charm to kick in and save the day.

The filmmakers feign boldness in tackling national politics, but revert to coyness and caricature when it comes to local matters, gesturing toward a multiculturalism that isn’t even skin deep and sweeping gentrification under the rug.

So disorganized that it seems to be pulling its conclusions out of its pockets, along with scraps of paper, matches, lint and half-forgotten junk.

Sitting through the lavish and dumb action spectacular Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is about as much fun as watching someone else play a video game.

A baroque blend of gibberish, mysticism and melodrama, the film seems engineered to be as unmemorable as possible, with the exception of the prosthetic teeth worn by the lead actor, Rami Malek, who plays Freddie Mercury, Queen’s lead singer.

Written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, and propelled by the charisma of Janelle Monáe, it lines up moments of possible insight and impact and messes up just about all of them.

By the end the most vivid figure on the screen is the lovable doggie who goes wherever dangling fingers are waiting to give the happy pooch a scratch.

The result is something that intermittently looks and sounds like a good movie without ever actually being one.

One of the things that makes Adore, which was written by Christopher Hampton, hard to take seriously is how seriously it takes itself, how utterly purged of humor or credible human complication the drama at its center turns out to be.

It’s a phoned-in, gutless piece of hack work that reminds you of other, better films in the same vein.

If realism is what you're after, you'll do better at "The Three Stooges." The Lucky One is where you will find death, redemption and kisses in the rain.

An attempt to inaugurate a new movie franchise, something that might appeal to women and mystery fans. This is a perfectly sound ambition, but the movie, directed by Julie Anne Robinson from a script by Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray and Liz Brixius, is so weary and uninspired that it feels more like an exhausted end than an energetic beginning.

This picture is mostly a lump of run-of-the-mill profanity sprinkled with a few remarks so geared toward engendering audience sympathy that you might think he was running for office -- or trying to win over a probation officer.

Hot Rod might be called the poor man’s “Eagle vs. Shark” if “Eagle vs. Shark” were not already the poor man’s “Napoleon Dynamite.” It certainly lacks the conceptual purity and aesthetic integrity of the “Jackass” movies. In any case poor certainly describes the quality of the filmmaking.

Try as it might to be refined and provocative, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never rises above the pedestrian creepiness of its conceit.

Raunchier and somewhat more imaginative than “Hot Rod.”

I don't think Mr. James intended to make a creepy, exploitative movie about teenage runaways - or, for that matter, a moralistic, cautionary tale of girls gone bad. But those are the default categories that Little Birds stumbles toward, perhaps because the filmmaker has not found a cogent way to channel his curiosity or his empathy.

By Monday, Torque will look like a period piece with its expiration date, January 2004, prominently displayed. The inevitable movie-inspired video game will appear more realistic.

The movie is like spending an idle afternoon browsing, and not buying.

Hallie's dad said it was Rocky Horror for toddlers whatever that is. Me and Hallie are 7 and we thought it was for babies.

Rae and Nanjiani do their best, but neither the dialogue nor the direction serves their talents adequately.

A movie that is as stuffed with bogus feeling and overwrought incident as a fast-food burrito.

Nothing in the picture works. It is both overwrought and tedious, its complicated narrative bogging down in lyrical voiceover, long flashbacks and endless expository conversations between people speaking radically incompatible accents.

Overplotted, hollow thriller.

Tries to show it has its heart in the right place, but it's such a crude undertaking that it doesn't actually seem to have a heart at all.

Feels like an early rehearsal for a play where all the movement is being coordinated but the underlying emotional notes have yet to be set.

The film is more of a pageant than a convincing drama. It’s so determined to deliver its moral that it loses its grip on the reality of its characters.

The picture, which fails to achieve its ambitions or to fulfill our expectations, is ultimately worse than a violent piece of hack work, in which the director isn't interested in displaying his integrity -- or taste. You'd be better off downloading the trailer: a much more convincing piece of storytelling.