Betsy Sharkey

Not "An Affair to Remember," mind you, but a welcome change from the Nicholas Sparks brand of mush that has overtaken the hearts-and-flowers corner of movieland.

All the talking would be fine, but the dialogue is preachy, the drama too earnest and the action kind of sluggish, though it's hard not to get a jolt when Johnson jumps behind the wheel.

For now, Efron remains an unrealized dream and Charlie St. Cloud an unrealized movie, though judging from the "ooohhs" and "awwwws" from the audience, for his core tween-girl fans, that's more than enough.

The movie is not exactly a laugh riot. But its comedy is amiable enough — and surprisingly clean.

If you're going to saturate a film with so much violence, at least it's nice to see an action hero - or antihero - actually feeling the pain.

The plot is lean, the dialogue is spare and there are some intriguing stabs at intellectual and emotional terrain. But the pacing is deadly, so slow there might be time for a catnap or two without missing anything important.

At first Tabu is intriguing. But the enigma gets wearing as the director's attention is divided between the homage to the silent film era and the film's underlying exploration of the regret of old age.

Everything unfolds at a glacial place, with so many emotional beats overplayed that the experience is more wearing than moving.

In the face of The Tempest, the stormy tragicomedy of rage, romance and redemption that is among Shakespeare's last and greatest works, Julie Taymor, a filmmaking savant of extraordinary vision and voice, suddenly and surprisingly folds.

Perhaps Switch's greatest strength is in giving us enough information to try to come up with better questions of our own.

Violet & Daisy comes out of the gate guns blazing. Too bad it ends as a misfire.

That sense of extreme, excess, over-the-top everything is there from start to finish. And isn't that what Bay fans count on even at cut-rate prices?

The better moments are fleeting. More often, the film feels flat-footed, and the story plays out as you'd expect. Long before Tanner Hall ends, you may well find yourself wishing for the final bell.

Any comic relief it affords comes with such an undertow of repressed emotions and displaced anger that it all starts to feel more depressing than dramatic.

In Man on a Ledge, Leth does well in taking us to dizzying heights. If only he had found a way to ground that thrill in some real pathos as well.

Cirque is a harmless bit of fluff with a very cool look, but there's just never enough bite.

If this low-budget indie is any indication, the younger Levinson's creative sensibilities appear to be darker than his dad's, the voice clearly his own.

What is missing is something new - clarity, insight, outrage. Instead, its understatement is ultimately its undoing.

Young's almost mystical musicianship is what saves it.

The film catches her long after she's left the public eye, and rather than an examination, or an assessment, of her politics, it instead offers up an affecting if not always satisfying portrait of the strong-willed leader humbled by age.

The bookish group at the heart of this talky film is having such a grand time trading tart exchanges their mood proves infectious. The sparring helps offset some of the contrivances that make Liberal Arts less buttoned up than it should be - so an A for effort and a C for execution.

The laughs come easily, the screams not so much. It's as if the filmmakers got so wrapped up in the satire they forgot to include the intense sensation of rising dread that creates all the thrills and chills that are part of the attraction.

Has the sweep of a classic John Ford movie, the sentiment of Frank Capra and a spirited steed named Joey who will steal your heart. The film itself is more difficult to love.

At the moment, modestly amusing does not stave off that desire for a really great live-action family film after years of watching the terrain land-grabbed by animation.

It's just that there isn't enough story - the book shouldn't be required reading for the film to make sense.

For all of its punishing pathos, the movie does not have the clean lines and elegance of another cut at crime in this city, "L.A. Confidential" (based on an Ellroy novel). As the day of reckoning approaches, the film spins out of control, careening between convoluted subplots, with the emotional pitch of the piece swinging too wildly.

If anything, the film is a reflection of the Web zeitgeist, where observation comes easily but insight is rare. What saves the documentary from becoming a complete frustration is the sheer, stunning prescience of Harris.

The script, written by director John Slattery and Alex Metcalf, drifts too quickly into blue-collar cliches, leaving its interesting collection of characters only half-drawn at best.

Zilberman's minimalistic approach fits the idea of the film better than it fits the actual film. It leaves this melancholy mood piece with some beautiful moments, but unlike Beethoven's work, A Late Quartet ultimately feels unfinished.

Smart isn't all it's cracked up to be and soon the movie is unraveling faster than all of Eddie's grand schemes.

It's massive, all the retaliation and the world saving stuff. And it's convoluted. Frankly no one should have to think that hard to keep up with the Joes.

Make no mistake, it is lovely to look at this celebrity bedazzled bit of L.A. crime history for a while. But the movie ultimately leaves you feeling as empty as the lives it means to portray.

This is a movie that leaves you wanting more. To care more, to cry more, to love more.

It's when the film detours into Irving's personal attachment to the birds, including photos of her as a child on the beach, that Pelican Dreams gets seriously off track. Fortunately, pelicans are interesting creatures and the time spent with the lens focused on them is payoff enough.

What helps offset the predictable in this very predictable movie is a series of show-stopping numbers, so props to the folks who oversaw music and choreography. But the true saving grace is a few of the central players.

Some of the language is smart, sinister and ironic in just the right ways, particularly when Addison, Eric Bana's serial-killing mastermind, delivers it. In other cases, the dialogue is so ludicrously off - either unnecessary, or unnecessarily misogynistic if a cop is doing the talking - that it's hard to believe the same person wrote it.

The problem with The Runaways is that they went with the wrong girl.

Far too conventional underneath all the trappings, you wish it would howl.

It's clear from first frame to last that the filmmakers decided to go broad, very broad, with a story that swings between hysterical, hyper-sexual, bizarre, surprisingly tender and just plain awful. This is one mixed bag of a movie.

A tedious two-plus hours. There were such possibilities in the origins idea.

The animation is snappy in the way it handles an extremely eclectic-looking bunch of monsters. The 3-D effects are nifty but, as with so much about "MU," not necessary.

The seriously out-of-control hard R dude is writer-director Nicholas Stoller, who apparently has major trust issues with his odd-couple stars, women and the audience. Did I forget anybody?

If you can get past the gross invasion of privacy issues that would exist if this were real life and not just a frothy confection, what you have is some bittersweet fun peppered by bursts of sharp patter, the best between the boys.

Belle is greatly buoyed by Mbatha-Raw's performance. She infuses Dido with a confident and intelligent grace that keeps you engaged long after the tangled story has let both the actress and audience down.

The writer-director becomes so intent on hammering home the parallels between economic decay, political disappointments and petty criminals, there is nothing soft, or subtle, about it. He should trust his audience more.

The movie has a few bursts of energy and invention — a cleverly executed jailbreak is one. But the story drifts and the pacing drags, failing to gather much steam until the final moments.

The intricate plotting that distinguished the book overwhelms the movie.

It's not your typical animated fare, but since the filmmakers can't quite decide whether its tale should be serious or silly, "Cat" trips and stumbles unsteadily between a bit of both.

The Other Son is a case of good intentions overwhelming the inherent drama - quite simply, political correctness got the best of it. The French director is so focused on covering all the bases, and ensuring a sense of equal empathy - and screen time - for the plight of both families, she leaves the film struggling to get beyond a log-jam of life lessons.

In the end Anna Karenina lets you down - visually stunning, emotionally overwrought, beautifully acted, but not quite right.

Even with all their huffing and puffing, this very salty, often funny affair is never quite as satisfying as it should be.

Too many of the characters are either good or bad, and that loss of nuance is missed.

A strange, but strangely entertaining combo of drag racing machismo, slapstick silliness, raunchy riffs, politically incorrect rants and sweet nothings.

Ironically this big, lumbering movie could have used more, not less. More Godzilla without question, and more emotional content for its very good cast too.

What saves the film is that it is also packed to the gills with the classic slapstick sweetness that makes SpongeBob — in or out of water, on big screen or small — hard not to laugh at and love at least a little. Giggle, giggle.

This portrait of a woman on the verge — of success, of suppression, of submission, of rebellion — is never fully realized.

In many ways, "Engagement" reflects both the best and worst of Stoller and Segel's creative collaborations.

Like the relationship she has chosen to dissect, the film is promising, disappointing, touching or frustrating, depending on the moment.

Lonergan has created a forceful yet extremely fitful film that teases with moments of brilliance only to frustrate in the end. Margaret is an unrealized dream, one you wish he'd gotten as right as his 2000 debut, "You Can Count on Me."

You can see the years of effort, the polish and precision that went into creating The Boxtrolls... But somehow it still doesn't add up to enough.

The film falls short of delivering the outrage and uplift that should have come easy for this true-life fight against justice denied. Unfortunately, that makes Conviction more a trial than a triumph.

With so many sight gags and nearly every living comic in the world making an appearance at some point, the entire operation, like Ron's ego, feels a bit bloated.

Two things to keep in mind when considering Barrymore, starring Christopher Plummer as the great John B: It was brilliant as a one-man stage show; it was never a good candidate for film.

The To Do List is neither supergood nor superbad, but passable doesn't exactly raise the bar.

A kung fu kick of a film that hits more than it misses.

The writing-directing brothers are usually interested in the small stuff of everyday, but perhaps they've gone a little too small here.

Sometimes the facts can get in the way of the drama, and that's the central problem here. That sense of needing to be true to the record is reflected in an overwhelmed screenplay.

The Last Five Years is not unpleasant to watch — the leads are delightful — but as a movie experience, it's not especially satisfying either.

Garcia and Farmiga have such an easy, natural chemistry that their on-screen sparkle helps mitigate the film's weaknesses. At others times, it serves to underscore what might have been. It's a feckless conundrum.

An emotional runaway of a film that carries neither the insight nor the uplift to make the weight of its dark journey worth it.

The great failing of The Iceman is not in giving us a monster, but in not making us care.

If you can get past the rough patches - a slightly sluggish start and a coda that feels like one punch line too many - there is some sinister fun to be had in watching Kinnear skating toward disaster on ice that is very thin indeed.

Unlike the teeming world living between the lines in Munro's story, there is not nearly enough in Hateship Loveship to keep you invested.

A joyous, raucous, righteous film but also a frustrating and disappointing one.

Tower Heist might not be a classic (it's not), but at least for a little while it will make you laugh instead of cry about the current state of affairs, which is more than you can say about a lot of things.

The finale is not an all-out disappointment. It should satisfy the franchise's fans, and it does wrap up any loose ends you might be wondering about.

The new thriller from South Korean director Park Chan-Wook is a bizarrely perverse, beautifully rendered mystery that you may or may not care to solve.

The animation style mirrors the original, which is simple in an appealing way. It is particularly effective in the action sequences, which make the most of animation's ability to create a playful reality. But the multi-layered historical references designed to be adroitly wry are a trickier gambit.

Starts imploding long before the massive asteroid hurtling toward Earth is due to deliver annihilation.

I don't know that we actually need Agent OSS 117, but the world is a slightly better place with him around. And the film itself is a harmless trifle -- make that truffle, chocolate of course.

Johnny Depp, back again as the swashbuckling miscreant who favors guy-liner and gold, somehow manages to keep this ship of fools afloat. But just barely.

It is a disappointment coming from writer-director David Cronenberg, who has proved such a master at mind games. Cronenberg is perhaps too faithful to the book. The topic is provocative and certainly timely, but the film never achieves the incisive power of his best work, "A History of Violence" for one. Even an A-list ensemble that includes Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti can't save it.

Sometimes it seems as if Iñárritu is literally carving out his actor's heart, so tangible does Bardem make Uxbal's fears. Iñárritu has so much that he wants to say - too much, in fact, and the film's central weakness - that he has created an emotional tsunami for both the actors and the audience.

By turns hysterical, heretical, guilty, innocent, silly, sophisticated, teasing and tedious.

There is a lot to savor in Rise of the Guardians, but sometimes too much of a good thing can be exhausting.

In trying to create a balanced portrait of the conflicts and the ordinary people affected by them, director Michael Berry, who co-wrote the screenplay with Luis Moulinet III, chips away at the authenticity and intensity that an issue-driven film like this sorely needs.

Sheridan seems as conflicted as the Cahills about their virtues and failings. The underlying themes -- love, loyalty, decency, duty, honor, betrayal -- that screenwriter David Benioff will use to both bind and break this family seem to bedevil him more than inspire him this time out.

An intelligent family film, a rarity, and while not quite Crowe at his absolute best, it carries his humanistic imprint and benefits from a strong acting ensemble that keep emotions in check.

The good thing about All Good Things - that would be Kirsten Dunst, for if there is one thing this strange and creepy film does well it is remind us of just what a talented actress she is.

When the filmmakers move into Nobbs' isolation, though, the movie flags - a surprise given Garcia's excellent work on HBO's minimalist personality study "In Treatment," on which he wrote and directed extensively.

There are some crowd-pleasers - but Hotel Transylvania never becomes the great monster mash that seemed in the offing.

Beautifully envisioned, badly constructed, the only truly terrifying things in the new horror movie Mama are the fake tattoos, short black hair and black T-shirts meant to turn "Zero Dark Thirty" star Jessica Chastain into a guitar-shredding, punk rocker chick.

The problem with It's Complicated, a romantic comedy about the menopausal crowd starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, is that it's not nearly complicated enough.

On the face of it, tackling the warring sides of science and the spirit seemed a good fit for the writer-director, who continues to be drawn to existential themes. There are occasional flashes of the exceptional, but the film's dodgy story can't sustain them.

Ultimately the documentary falls short of explaining why Vreeland not only made his choice but maintained it.

For all of the substantive issues underpinning the documentary, it still feels a slight film for Berlinger, and very unlike the documentary veteran's best work, found in his dogged following of the West Memphis Three case.

The look helps provide a little subtext, but not enough. For such an emotional piece, the dialogue stays too close to the surface. More problematic, the trio's encounters feel contrived; you can see the filmmaker's hand staging each one.

The division between the personal and scientific stories is not a clean one. It gives the film an uneven rhythm as it at times lurches between the two women's very separate lives.