Betsy Sharkey

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.

The result is a more-clever-than-most window into modern urban yuppie mating rituals, tracking just how tough it is to keep a grip on love and the corporate ladder at the same time.

What The Dilemma ultimately does best is create a platform for Vaughn to drag that iconic character of his into full-blown adulthood.

Director Stephen Daldry has taken great care in looking at it through the eyes of a precocious New York City boy in a film filled with both sentiment and substance.

I realize that making Immortals immortal was way too much to ask, but frankly, just a shade more plausible, not to mention pleasurable, would have been nice.

What he (Jay Baruchel) brings to She's Out of My League, in addition to the geek and the gawk, is a dash of the debonair, which might seem impossible and yet he does.

There is an interesting kernel of a story about beauty, betrayal and brutality inside each of the film's scenarios and a cast that could handle anything thrown at it. But the kernel never pops, and all we're really left with is a whole lot of neo-noir corn.

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.

Instead of a cautionary tale, they've looked at Flynn's life through rose-colored glasses.

Flipped is the kind of small, special movie that wraps you up in so much warmth, humor and humanity that it will leave you wishing that stories like this weren't so rare.

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?

Did I mention the dialogue? Well, really the armored car driver put it best when he said, "We're in trouble here…" No joke.

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

It's not "On Golden Pond" by any stretch, but it is nice to have Fonda back in the fractious family way.

All of that combines to make Colombiana into a scandalous blend of action, sex and violence. My apologies in advance for having so much fun.

The film doesn't have nearly the bite - ferocious or delicious - that any self-respecting vampire movie really should. It's as if all the life has drained away.

There is such unflinching passion in the piece that The Paperboy deserves to be seen even though it can feel almost as flawed as its characters.

After scoring big in 1998 with "Mary" - the zipper issue, the "hair gel" mix-up, the roving troubadours - their (Farrelly brothers) raw inventive edge has never been quite as sharp. Hall Pass, starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis, continues that creative slide into everyday crude.

It turns out Two Night Stand is a one-act sex comedy badly in need of two more — acts, not nights.

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."

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.

MacFarlane is a very funny dude, and there are times A Million Ways to Die is indeed funny. But too often the movie feels half-baked.

At best, the jokey bits are occasionally funny.

The film is only slightly more boorish than the racy cult hit was on telly and would probably not be worth the celluloid expended were it not for the bookish, brainy Will McKenzie (Simon Bird).

Delivery Man, a heart-tugging new comedy about fatherhood and family, is warm as well as wry.

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.

We're the Millers is full of moments that feel as forced as the marriage of convenience — and contrivance — in the movie.

Lost is the fresh, perverse, painfully politically incorrect R-rated pleasure that came when "The Hangover" ate up the summer of 2009.