Betsy Sharkey

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

If anything, watching the film is like attending an old-style Southern tent revival - you want to believe in the fight against all that fire and brimstone. Heck, you want to join the righteous brigade. But when the lights go up and the fever dies down, it feels more like you've witnessed a show than a real showdown with the devil.

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.

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

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.

The heart of this film is on the road with Bateman and McCarthy. If not for their brilliance, Identity Thief would be running on empty.

Where "Paris" was the ingénue, fresh-faced and surprising, "New York" needed to come in with the confidence of a more practiced hand, and it never quite manages that. Better to think of it as a day trip rather than an actual film, just a brief, mostly delightful excursion into the city.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Occasionally Amazing Spider-Man 2 might be a better way to think of the not-always-spectacular but sometimes satisfying Spider-Man sequel.

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.

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.

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.

The dialogue remains spotty and sappy, the effects still haven't caught up to modern-day standards, but "Twilight's" popularity is such that even when it falls short, it doesn't seem to matter.

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.

What you may not expect is quite how satisfying much of the film is, with Duhamel turning out to be a very good sparring partner for Heigl.

Envisioned as a psychosexual thriller about a woman scorned, director Atom Egoyan's latest puzzle is just puzzling, little more than a messy affair with mood lighting, sexy lingerie, heavy breathing and swelling, um, music.

An ode to romance of the most starry-eyed sort, a sugary paean to quixotic clichés and a film destined to be a guilty pleasure for some (me included, sigh) and the painful price of a relationship for others (so steel yourselves).

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.

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.

Music in Babe's and Ricky's is righteous and raucous and easy to come by, but the story of Mama Laura is more elusive. And that is the frustration.

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.

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.

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.

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

As it happens, this recycled reclamation of underdogs saga is neither as bad as it sounds nor quite as good as it could be.

For the most part, the florid flourishes are so lightly played by Owen and Binoche, screenwriter Gerald Di Pego's melodrama can almost be forgiven.

Between Law's performance and Shepard's script, which brims with explicit and expressive dialogue, the movie is remarkable for its ability to exhaust, irritate and also entertain.

So super complicated (implausible?) that in the wrong hands it would be laughable. Instead, this very gritty bit of greased action does a decent job of shaking the sluggish out of January.

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.

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.

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.

Young's almost mystical musicianship is what saves it.

Brutal, bloody beyond belief, and has no socially redeeming value. So it is with a certain amount of guilt that I say it's kind of a wicked blast to watch, especially if you're in the mood for some righteous revenge.

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?

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

For a movie about planes, a lot happens on the ground — those refueling stops can take forever. But the animators take advantage of the power of flight, packing the action sequences with daredevil runs. But it's a race, and a kind of sameness occasionally sets in.

If you're a "Terminator" fan, though, "Salvation" is mostly worth it. The machines are mindless, yes, but there are enough pyrotechnics and heavy artillery to feel like Armageddon squared. And when the story starts to crumble around Bale, Worthington is there to pick up the pieces.

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

With so many twists, the movie feels like it's trying too hard. Some moments are cleverly constructed; and others seem as if the filmmakers have left themselves no plausible escape.

rRegrettably falls prey to its grand and grisly ambitions - it's neither grand nor grisly enough to seriously satisfy Poe-ish cravings for murder, mystery and literary allusions.

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.

It's a challenging film, but maybe not as challenging as it should be.

All the Wilderness seems tailor-made to play to the actor's strengths — Johnson's script is as lean as Smit-McPhee, both proving adept at doing more with less.

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

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

The spectacularly brutal fighting is the film's main calling card, and in that "Rise of an Empire" doesn't disappoint. Still, in the battle for best guilty pleasure, I'd give it to the Spartans of "300," by a head.

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 sequel sometimes feels like a series of gags ginned up by a gaggle of writers who are not always on the same page.

In truth, the film fizzles as much as it fumes.

What's missing are the kind of moments that actually matter, the ones that are so gripping that you want desperately for time to stop - to savor them, to feel the fear, the passion, the regret. Ah, well … maybe next time.

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 hyper-realistic-looking, character-driven story of survival with talking dinosaurs that can't decide whether to inform or entertain. The film and its featured creatures do a little of both but modestly.

Gimme Shelter, a ripped-from-real-life story of a pregnant teen's journey toward hope, is filled with very good intentions, very bad dialogue and a surprisingly affecting turn by its star Vanessa Hudgens.

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

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

There's no real depth or texture to the characters of any sort, sentimental or otherwise, and I say that as someone who can be brought to tears by a Hallmark commercial.

The struggles in the movie are with the moments when life and liberty are on the line. The ones that should put you on the edge of your seat are more likely to have you glancing at your watch.

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 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 Purge: Anarchy is a good deal bloodier, but also — gulp — a good deal better than its predecessor. Make no mistake, a good "Purge" does not equal a good movie, but the post-apocalyptic thriller is slightly more interesting because it takes itself, and its menace, more seriously.

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.

Fortunately Stewart seems to thrive in water over her head, and when she pulls Gandolfini in with her the movie gels. It makes you wish the filmmaker had left them in the deep end longer.

The film is helped by Costner's self-deprecating, aw-shucks charm. The actor is game whether he's being asked to fight off truculent teens or treacherous terrorists.

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.

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

At some point you hope the actor (Butler) will find a movie that will give him the right material to make hearts truly beat faster. Until then, it appears we'll have to settle for films with more flaws than his characters.

What the movie could use is a little more faith — in the power of its message and the art of filmmaking. Instead, Heaven is sincere to a fault, and the closer it gets to heaven, the more it wavers.

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

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

Piranha 3D is trying so hard for the laughs and the allusions amid all the gore, and endless bloodbath of bare naked ladies, that it completely forgets to frighten anyone.

The heat that should saturate the film as betrayals mount and boundaries are broken flickers and dies many times over Miss Julie's languid two-plus hours.

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.

Cantinflas the movie tries to capture the magic of this much-loved legend, and it does so in fits and starts.

The story is poignant and compelling, but ultimately the film doesn't have the heft it needs to fill out the big screen.

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.

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

Nighy is usually a treat to watch navigating life's bad turns, so it's especially frustrating that the filmmaker so often leaves him at loose ends.

The footage itself, particularly of the surf, is spectacular, with veteran cinematographer Bill Pope handling the camerawork. But the drama is soggy, overreaching for the heartfelt and overdoing the inspirational.

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.

Tension is one of Home's biggest issues. There just isn't nearly enough of it. Story is another.

There are enough clever bits, in that exploding-bodies kind of way, to inject some fun into the party. White and director of photography Scott Kevan, who collaborated on "Stomp the Yard," have some seriously inventive visuals, which at times are smash-cut fabulous.

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.

The franchise remains as much an endurance test as a movie, but at least a better Bay has delivered a leaner, meaner, cleaner 3-D rage against the machines.

If you're a Sandler film buff, the comedy is classic Sandler and will probably satisfy. Still, the best thing about the movie remains Aniston - she is reason enough to just go with it.

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.

The intricate plotting that distinguished the book overwhelms the movie.

Waugh has a good feel for the cars and action extremes, while director of photography Shane Hurlbut acquits himself nicely. But the screenplay written by George Gatins is full of potholes.

Country Strong is Feste's second film, and she infuses it with an earnestness that swings between too too much and appealing, the same earnestness that swamped her filmmaker debut last year with "The Greatest."

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.

Oone of those movies that falls between complete disaster and loads of fun. Mild amusement is probably about right.