Betsy Sharkey

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 kills themselves are both bountiful and bloody, the movie references are brilliant and bloody, the funny is very frequent and very frequently bloody, but to say any more would ruin the boo.

When the movie should touch the heart, it just misses. When moments should produce gales of laughter, it struggles for a smile. When panic and fear should set the heart racing, it doesn't.

The film finds its footing as the weekend progresses and the temperature and tension — outside and in — rise.

Although the movie isn't a complete disaster, it's not your father's RoboCop either.

Maybe there really are supernatural forces at work in this world. How else to explain Beautiful Creatures? The movie is an intriguing, intelligent enigma — three words not typically associated with teen romances.

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.

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.

The man was not, by most accounts, pedestrian. In trying to follow so closely in his footsteps, the film, however, is.

This kinder, gentler Allen is still clever, still amusing, and the film itself is a confection tempting enough to consider a taste. Yet there is that empty-calorie letdown after it's over. Maybe it's time to book another trip to Spain.

This is a disappointing turn coming from Phillips, particularly since "The Hangover" was such a fresh, bracing brew of black comic fun.

A wildly whirling martial arts spectacle with an endless array of exotic knives, a penchant for Zen philosophizing and an unquenchable thirst for blood. It may just be one of the best bad movies ever.

The movie version of karaoke. It sings the same tune as the 2007 British underground hit, but it's a little, and at times a lot, off-key.

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.

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.

If you allow yourself to drift with it, rather than get frustrated by all the non sequiturs, Nobody Walks becomes a more enjoyable film.

Though the film is peppered with one-liners tailor-made for Spacey to sling with stinging effect, it doesn't so much leave you laughing as just weary, and wishing this weren't a true story at all.

The prospect that this role would officially shift Bettany to a bigger stage, taking him from the character roles that have become his specialty to leading man status, dies a sort of Darwinian death from bad plotting.

Despite Teardrop Diamond's rough edges, the filmmaker, who has spent much of her career acting on stage and screen, succeeds in transporting us back to that other time; capturing the lyricism of the dialogue and the fetid South that Williams so brilliantly envisioned where nearly everything goes to rot.

Somehow all that testosterone-infused blow-'-em-up craziness turns out to be kind of a kick.

The writer-director digs deeply and with a marked sensitivity, capturing the desperate, heartbroken humanity of the time and the place. But it is also a movie of frustrating stumbles — blunders that diminish what might have been a brilliant film.

That John Carter is so hit and miss, and miss, and miss is unfortunate on any number of levels.

William Shakespeare - whoever he was - I think would probably be at least a little amused by Anonymous. For amusing it is - along with bawdy, brazen, politically outrageous, plausible enough and occasionally graced with something close to Shakespearean cleverness in an absurdist sort of way.

So thrill-less, so chill-less is Jack Reacher that it is unlikely to spark interest, much less controversy.

Anderson spends most of his energy creating a mood - making "Vanishing" more cerebral than white-knuckle, though a few more shrieks (mine) might have been nice.

FD 5 did not raise even a single goose bump - which for a movie that bills itself as horror is not a good thing. The camp factor, however, is high and makes the 95 minutes pretty much fly by.

Sadly, an obsession with raunchy one-liners trips everything up, turning a clever conceit into something closer to a sleazy, cheesy affair.

If there is one constant in Eat Pray Love, the imperfect yet beautifully rendered adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir on a year of heartbreak and healing starring Julia Roberts - it is this: There will be tears.