Chris Kaltenbach

This is a movie about guns blazing, men punching, speedometers straining and explosions exploding. On all those levels, it succeeds just fine - which makes for a great amusement-park ride, but perhaps not much of a movie.

Godsend is two-thirds of a good movie, with a final third that's just downright awful. So much wasted potential only makes the whole thing that much more painful.

It's mindless, which is rarely true of French cinema, dull, which is rarely true of Hong Kong films, and portentous, which shouldn't be true of any film about a man-eating dog.

Unabashedly sentimental and just as unabashedly cliched.

Rebound is determinedly lightweight fare that shamelessly resorts to every crowd-pleasing cliche it can think of to wring sympathy and laughs from its audience. To say it succeeds is not meant as a compliment.

It's unfortunate that none of the principal actors is able to convey the passion the characters are supposed to have for each other.

While I have no problem with slackers making me laugh, when they start preaching, that's when my ears close and my eyes roll.

The out-of-control plot doesn't unfold gracefully or organically; it simply speeds along with no regard for anything other then getting to the next plot twist.

The bad guys just seem like a bunch of X-Games rejects, and Blart's ingenuity proves way more effective than it has any right to be.

Despite stellar work from the cast, the movie seems as emotionally distant from its audience as its characters are from each other.

Unfortunately, whenever Beautiful threatens to work as parody, it veers uncomfortably into pop psychology.

It's a sad day for film lovers when the best thing that can be said about a Western is that it's pleasant.

See it to be reminded (if you need further reminding) of this actress' remarkable range. Otherwise, take a pass.

Almost sinks under the weight of too many red herrings, but is rescued by a skewed sense of reality and pervasive sense of dread that should keep audiences from dwelling on them.

The movie annoyingly waits until the end to reveal the names of those experts who have been doing all the talking; it would have been nice to know these folks' qualifications first.

When the women are onscreen and their relationship is on display, Head Over Heels trips merrily along. But every time the focus shifts to Prinze, the film suffers from a bad case of fallen arches.

It should come as no surprise that the dogs are as cute as caninely possible. But is it conceivable that, once you've seen 101 adorable dogs, 102 seems redundant?

Bullock is so good, working hard to pull off the transition from grief-stricken wife and mother to reluctant time traveler, you want to pull for her. So it's possible - not easy, but possible - to overlook the script's inconsistencies.

Even in a world where stupidity mixed with cliche is all too often mistaken for humor, this movie barely meets expectations.

Should sell its soul for a joke.

There's much more than a little Stifler here. Still, there's a recklessness to the character, as well as Scott's performance, that almost engenders respect; he's so determinedly unregenerate, so outrageously lewd, so unrelentingly grating, one almost looks forward to seeing just how far he'll go.

Arthur and the Invisibles tries way too hard.

Outside of a strong (and largely misused) cast and an abundance of moody atmosphere, there's precious little to recommend this exploitative mess.

Still, it's hard not to long for the Pooh stories of old, those endearingly anarchic little tales that captured the wonder of a child's world without ever once condescending to it.

To its credit, Heartbreakers lives up to expectations. Almost.

Girls Will Be Girls thinks watching outrageous people acting outrageously is its own reward. It isn't.

Benefits from an amiable chemistry between Harrelson and Banderas, and Davidovich always makes a good tough-as-nails dame with more smarts than any man will give her credit for.

When Crews is onscreen, White Chicks is a film that fears nothing and no one. When he's not, it's a film too tentative and soft-hearted to scale the farcical heights to which it aspires.

Young Cyrus is undeniably cute, and some of her songs are as catchy as the law allows - especially "Hoedown Throwdown," But asked to anchor a full-length movie, she simply doesn't have the chops to pull it off.

Gets credit for avoiding the easy path. Too bad the path it chooses doesn't lead us anywhere we want to be taken.

Moonlight Mile leavens the mood occasionally, but it cheapens things by insisting that everybody onscreen and in the audience leavethe theater smiling.

Is there anyone out there who hasn't seen this movie a dozen times before? Maybe even as recently as last week, since it's basically the same story line as the funnier, if less heartfelt, "Four Christmases."

What the film needs is more heart, humor and maybe some honest-to-goodness humility, not energy. And unfortunately, that's about all Gooding seems able to bring to it.

The strong young cast keeps the film from being a total waste.

There are moments, heaven forgive me, that left me chuckling. Not to mention eternally grateful that it's these guys doing this stuff, and not me.

Gracie is painfully earnest, which might be OK were it not also painfully trite, painfully cliched and painfully formulaic.

Too much about the game and not enough about the town, the players and everything else.

Fans should be satisfied, but it's hard to imagine anyone else will be much interested in TMNT.

In its own B-film, let's-make-them-jump-out-of-their-seats way, Bats is quite the hoot.

Determinedly genial and relentlessly bland.

The setup is bad even by slasher-film standards: poorly acted, atrociously written and unimaginatively directed. But once Freddy and Jason have at it, the movie takes on a recklessly kinetic energy that finally delivers on its title's promise.

It's obvious and stereotypical. It's leaden and unconvincing. It's not nearly as outrageous as it thinks it is.

Unapologetically cliched and determinedly upbeat (even when it shouldn't be).

The Mexican is its own worst enemy, consistently undermining its best efforts. The result is an over-long series of quirks, a film that's far less than the sum of its often amusing and ingenious parts.

The latest in a line of quirky, feel-good British comedies, Greenfingers fits right into the breezily entertaining mold but doesn't expand it.

Puerile, offensive, degrading, dumb, pointless, insipid and may just well be a harbinger for the end of Western civilization as we know it. But I laughed. Sorry.

Thank goodness for Davy Crockett; without him, the Alamo could have proven the blandest heroic siege in movie history.

Relentless in its crudity, so indiscriminate in its pursuit of tasteless laughs, so pure in its determination to offend, one almost has to admire it. It's even funny. Sometimes.

The cinematic equivalent of a careless foot fault.

You get the film's message, that mankind does not react well when challenged by unpleasantness it can't explain away, within the first 15 minutes -- leaving more than 100 minutes to ponderously belabor the point.

Lane gives the film her best shot; she's pretty much the only reason to see it. There's an intelligence mixed with ferocity that makes her performance compelling, far-more-so than anything else in the film.

Short on details and long on extreme, unflattering close-ups.

Save for Jesus' skin color, which he shares with some of his fellow Jews, little about the story is re-imagined or re-evaluated.

Children should enjoy Jungle Book 2 just fine. Adults will wonder why anyone bothered.

Chicken Little is relentlessly cute. That's the good news, and those who consider the word cute anathema may want to look for entertainment elsewhere.

If only all this wonderful talent wasn't in service to a story that pushes credulity beyond the breaking point, perilously close to the realm of farce. Too many coincidences, too much convenient timing, too little honest plot development.

This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.

Put simply, Mona Lisa Smile is too much of a stacked deck -- a movie too concerned with ensuring that audiences feel a certain way to risk anything like nuance or interpretation.

All that artistry is surrounded by a hackish, paint-by-numbers storyline that makes the time between dance numbers seem endless.

Unable to embrace the world he's seeking to depict, Cherot is left with a lifeless shell, a movie so preoccupied with being noble that it forgets to be interesting. The problem with G is not that it's unbelievable, it's just boring.

The story is a comic-book tale at its most basic level.

Go to enjoy the technical expertise, and take a first-grader (and not a particularly savvy one) along to find something of value in everything else.

Ella Enchanted is one cute movie.

Though lovingly crafted and beautifully photographed, the movie does little to make Jones seem compelling, or even all that good.

The result is a film that plays like a creaking melodrama, with good guys and bad guys and precious little in between.