Eric Henderson

Even permitting that the movie's setup counts almost by default as one of Nicholas Sparks's more complicated scenarios, that makes his failure to draw up compelling, flawed, human characters all the more conspicuous.

The expansion has the unintended and unfortunate effect of doing exactly the same thing to Alexander he accused his family of doing in the first place: marginalizing him.

You can't help but be impressed by how much it represents a natural, even defensive evolutionary step on its creator's part.

And the jury's still very much out over whether Shawn Levy is an inept comedy director masquerading as an opportunistically dramatic one, or vice versa.

Roger Donaldson embellishes an already overly plotty scenario with hollowly attractive genre superfluities.

Jim Caviezel commits only to the level of God-like omniscience that Mel Gibson whipped into him a decade ago, and as such his character often seems less a teacher than an appropriately shadowy figurehead of authority.

Just as Michael Douglas doesn't have it in his guts to make Oren a real son of a bitch (a grandpa Gekko), Diane Keaton's jangled neurotic tics lack any dramatic import.

It's not even made clear whether the machines can feel pain. But after sitting through Fire & Rescue, interminable even at a lean 83 minutes, I sincerely hope they do.

That this retrograde "straight talk" somehow managed to emerge on screen as a reasonably genial ensemble comedy speaks to the strength of its performers.

It has the core of a genuine crowd-pleaser, but unfortunately something bigger and more all-consuming keeps getting into its head.

Tom Cruise's participation transmutes, as it always does, everything around him, turning the movie's series of false starts, dead ends, and hard lessons into a working metaphor for his own career.

The filmmakers only bother to lay out comedic set pieces that are simply family-friendly big-budget variations on Jackass stunts.

In form, it's no wham-bam VFX sizzle reel replete with sputtering, ejaculatory climaxes. It's the magnificently sustained equivalent of Ravel's "Bolero," with nuclear warheads in place of timpani rolls.

Only the very charitable would characterize this strain of providence as anything other than dumb, or at least incredibly forgetful.

If you programmed an algorithm to figure out how The Lawnmower Man might be retold by Snake Plissken at the conclusion of Escape from L.A., you'd still wind up with a more recognizably human effort.

The net effect is a shapeless would-be diversion in which things just happen independently, a string of effects missing any cause.

Despite one or two moments of Venture Brothers-worthy fancy, the film is as by-the-numbers as any this series has ever offered.

Once the money shots of Darren Aronofsky's version recede, it becomes ever more clear that his intention is to tackle the capriciousness of Old Testament logic. And, ultimately, to assent to it.

Freed from the burden of starting anew, the film restores the Muppets' rightful place as stars of their own show.

The film transcends the déjà vu of its borrowed trappings but ironically sacrifices all momentum in favor of a long series of physical tests.

Beyond the forthright identity politics and titillating theatrical misdemeanors, one still comes away wondering about the things that remain concealed.

The film spent roughly a dozen years in development, and the moronic, corporate detritus from that long time warp is strewn about like so many improbable history lessons.

With Travis Mathews's help, James Franco's persona forms a kind of symmetry: 1980's dubious homophobia against 2013's risible homophilia.

Ultimately the film is, like the Faux News programming it caricatures at face value, a deck-stacking simulation of a dialogue it isn't even remotely interested in opening.

Martin Scorsese's keyed-up, irreverent tone frequently fails to distinguish itself from the grunting arias sung by the oily paragons of commerce his film evidently intended to deflate.

Strangers on a Train, though undoubtedly effective as a classic Hitchcock thriller, is also nothing more complicated than one elongated gay cruise joke-cum-horror story.

Child’s Play is only a shade more terrifying than Teddy Ruxpin.

Lee deftly follows the actions of two dozen people on what turns out to be one of the longest, hottest, most memorable and maybe most tragic days of their lives. And he does it without so much as a single lugubrious or extraneous moment.