Ernest Hardy

Corsini's insight into the psyche of this contemporary woman doesn't have much of a point because it tells us nothing new.

Cudlitz gives a haunted performance as a weathered, misogynistic, homophobic, blue-collar man roiling with demons, and Griffith can break your heart as a good woman staggering under the weight of life.

Writer-director Scott Schirmer eschews the ironic approach, thankfully, and instead works to pull genuine tension from his material. He does that quite well, and any unintentional laughs (or eye rolls) are icing.

Isn't a must-see, but it's definitely worthwhile.

Uneven acting by the cast and a script that could have used at least one more overhaul to synthesize its elements (the love story is so flimsily mapped out as to be unbelievable) cripple Saulter's ambitions, but the energy of the film pulls you in and holds you through its tragic ending.

If only this movie were rich enough, strong enough to be worthy of this (Dafoe's) performance.

Despite its weighty material and some moving scenes (much of the Sudanese cast are survivors of the war), this aggressive crowd-pleaser is slighter than its subject matter deserves.

What's made powerfully clear is that we've reached a dire point of crisis that, while largely rooted in economics, is about so much more than dollars and cents.

Though the heavy-handed score is emotionally manipulative, Rokab alternates between hopeful and grim prognoses, mercifully providing a measure of hope and possibility that many films of this ilk do not.

While the acting is fine and the direction accomplished, the real stars of the film are editor Baxter and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre. Forfeiting a gold star is whoever haphazardly dubbed the film, simply giving up about halfway through.

Writer-director Todd Haynes (Safe, Poison) still makes movies like a first-time filmmaker afraid he won't get another chance; he crams every idea, every image ever dreamed, onscreen.

Hardwick doesn't have the chops yet to give the movie the caffeinated zip that it needs to really fly. There are too many dull, flat stretches…(however) the soundtrack kicks ass.

When Boote gets out of the way, the film is illuminating and infuriating.

Shamelessly manipulative, it's a highly effective if not very good film, its success entirely due to the talents of its cast. They bring heart to a script that is unabashedly about pushing buttons.

Director Ruby Yang doesn't even try to upend the clichés that practically define the kind of inspirational documentary she's made about art transforming the lives of at-risk and disabled students. She embraces them while pushing the film toward an eye-misting ending you'll see coming from the opening moments.

Writer-director Kirk Jones has the movie roll over, fetch and chase its own tail in order to make you love it.

For those seeking even a little adventurousness in their filmgoing experiences, the movie will wear thin very quickly.

Drags on far too long.

Although it's grotesque to see pre-teens stomping in underground warehouse-battle settings, at least Battlefield America's racial politics are interesting.

It is -- in mood, execution, and shameless sentimentality -- a Bette Midler movie with an Irish accent.

This is powerful reportage, beautifully shot and gracefully laid out; too bad that Kendall ties it all up with more deep thoughts from the bus itself, thoughts that sound like outtakes from a TED Talk on the interconnectedness of all living things.

It's fine acting of - and chemistry - between Paxton, Margulies and Mark Wahlberg that gives this film (written by Jim McGlynn, directed by Jack Green) its kick.

The film hits its mark of being a popcorn action flick just fine.

Fly Away could have been stronger if its antiseptic visual style, which anchors it in old-fashioned TV movie mode, had been more adventurous in shouldering some of the weight of depicting the emotional and psychic anguish of the story.

A determinedly old-fashioned boxing/coming-of-age film, only perfunctorily hitting its marks.

The film twists tension in the viewer's gut as the clock ticks toward a day of reckoning. But the script could be tougher-minded.

A little too familiar to be wholly satisfying. What makes it worthwhile is Julia Jay Pierrepont III's direction.

Although the film disappoints in the final stretch (both the villain and his motive turn out to be very lame), it confidently thrills for most of its nearly two-hour length.

In the end, solid acting, stellar special-effects, and well-wrought tension make the film a worthy date flick or matinee outing.

The corniness and predictability feel, if not quite fresh, then not so groaningly stale.

A good, though unremarkable, film.

Had Xiaoshuai trusted audience sympathies to stay with a slightly more forceful character, he'd likely have crafted the heart tugger that the film aims to be.

A calculated bid to turn the Rock into a more family-friendly commodity. That calculation may be transparent, but it pays off: Cracking one-liners and alternating between world-weariness and growing affection for his charges, Johnson is wonderful -- much better than his material.

Volumes are said about class, assimilation, and the ways the assimilated sometimes shame and scar those who haven't shorn themselves of ethnic or racial signifiers. There is pungency in this shorthand, in these sketches that are richly evocative without saying too much or giving too little. You can't help but wish the movie had more of it.

Ustaoglu has made Mehmet unbelievably naive -- and the hardships piled upon him unintentionally evoke "The Perils of Pauline." That dilutes what should be a powerful protest film, and robs it of the emotional impact it aims for.

The film's scope is staggering, including its detailed outlining of BP's origins and fingerprints across decades of unrest in Iran.

Remind(s) us of the power of good old-fashioned character-driven movies.

The film is never really more than a series of loosely connected riffs and set pieces. That'd be fine except much of it is slack and airless; the laughs are many but they're too spread out -- a far cry from the series' heyday of taut, rapid-fire lunacy. Still, it's worth catching the film just for Sedaris' performance.

A tad dry but never boring.

Director Darnell Martin (I Like it Like That) races through the script's bullet points with a brisk superficiality that leaves crucial plot points underdeveloped and unresolved, and refuses to engage the dark side of Leonard Chess’ paternalism.

Despite the shakiness of their collective accents, the cast goes through the paces of this tense, testosterone-driven shoot-'em-up with gusto.

We don't really care about this everyman's moral dilemna and spiritual crisis because -- for all the poetic insights he offers in his philosophical voice-over -- he never transcends the details to become an engrossing character.

Stripped of the pretension of the overrated "Trainspotting," but it's also void of the earlier film's ambition or glimmers of real cultural insight.

A curious mixture of banality and revelation.

Directed by Garner, Craigslist Joe is sweet, moving, and frustrating.

As he explains the male-male relationships and the absence of stigma or judgment, the film soars.

There's not a single surprise or moment of dramatic tension in Uncle Nino, which has already proved itself a hit as a self-distributed film in the Midwest.

The gorgeous Crudup is talented, but this charming asshole (more asshole than charming) is old hat for him, little more than another of the blank-eyed-loser-on-a-spiritual-quest roles in which he's been trafficking lately.

Coy, cutesy, sentimental, and shamelessly manipulative.

In truth, the only reason this film was made was to allow viewers to ogle pretty young things behaving badly.

For adults, the film will drag in spots, but it's filled with all those values you hope to instill in your children.

The flaws pale against what's illustrated, which is not just how Prop. 8 passed, but the sordid, cynical workings of our political machine.

The latest installment in the "Boys Life" series has just as many hits as misses -- more misses, actually -- but the high points easily stand alongside past triumphs.

Tim eventually evolves out of smugness, but unfortunately, the film merely trades it for sappiness. Fischer, meanwhile, imbues Janice with a wounded soulfulness that cuts right through the clichés. The less said about a hideously wigged Topher Grace as a smarmy self-help author, the better.

An adequate popcorn matinee flick that's anchored by Judd's wonderful lead performance -- a performance that is better than the film earns or deserves.

The cast is engaging, and there are a few light-chuckle moments, but the script needed another rewrite, and the film itself needed to be guided by a thornier sensibility than Fuller's.

The kids absolutely win your heart, but there's something off-putting in the film's lazy juxtaposition of unexamined Negro dysfunction tropes (absent fathers, violent streets) against an idyllic Africa tended by white benevolence.

It's almost foolish to review Hannah Montana: The Movie as anything other than the latest cog in a cultural phenomenon/mass-marketing juggernaut. The film itself certainly doesn't aspire to anything more.

Mr. 3000, which starts out promisingly, squanders Mac's natural gift of salty gruffness by shoehorning him into a dull, heartwarming cinematic lesson on humility and the joys of teamwork.

It's all well acted and expertly crafted — quick edits that play mind and visual games with the viewer, music that heightens tension, some cool special effects — but most of the victims are people you want to slap even before their secrets are spilled.

All the characters are broadly sketched, though well acted. Beyond that, the innate tension of the subject matter — and the shamelessly manipulated emotions — carries the film to its uplifting ending.

Disappointingly dumb.

Though the film is generally weak, treading very familiar ground, those dashes of insight and humor - along with Griffiths' performance - pull you into the film.

An appallingly crude film, with dialogue lifted off bumper stickers, characters stitched together from shorthand clichés (the brassy black drag queen; the fiery little Latin number) and a plot that's on cruise control from the opening credits.

The Colony has modest rewards: It's decently acted, delivers some well-executed jolts, doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence, and is mercifully free of ironic distance.

Hamlet, like its title character, is a mopey, dopey thing that you just want to scream at: Do something!

A feel-good, heartwarming film that all but drowns in saccharine.

The film looks great; the animation is detailed, fluid in action and meticulously designed, and the action sequences are meticulously mapped out. But K Missing Kings is really for diehards who have not only embraced the series but also the handful of manga it spawned.

Revolution is educational, but its shortcomings are glaring.

Though the film covers familiar queer-cinema ground, Latter Days' finely observed truths about the painful costs of being yourself make even the contrivance of its happy ending forgivable.

But Walking, which is well-acted and fast-moving, takes a tumble from which it never fully recovers once Josh's diary is found, and the rest of the film is spent tending to spilled secrets and their collateral damage.

Mildly amusing, both charming and diverting, it plays like a La La Land home movie.

Infuriating on almost every conceivable level.

A very odd cinematic creature.

It's a mildly enjoyable romp.

Hamstrung by a script that is too often smug, obvious and self-important.

Despite Menkin's clear belief that he's crafted a rousing true-life drama, his film plays like a cliché-ridden, painfully self-conscious Hollywood melodrama about a noble person with disabilities.

You root for the kids, who are utterly captivating, but Green is another story. His shtick -- a combo of insufferable stage-parent and unbearable rock geek -- is exhausting.

The film staggers under its own didacticism. Too often we're told of men who were professionals back home and are here reduced to driving cabs, waiting tables or vending ice cream.

More than once, while watching the film, I thought: The camera should really just turn away from those grating teen brats and follow the mom (Holly Hunter).

The film won't likely change any minds, but there's a taut political essay beneath the blatant campaigning.

By the time the movie ends, having traversed numerous plot twists and character revelations, the viewer is emotionally drained in a bittersweet sort of way.

Unfortunately, given both its content and the media's collective failure to fully report the (ongoing) story, the film only intermittently has a pulse.

Slight but enjoyable documentary.

What's fresh for these people is, frankly, old news for anyone who has seen even one or two documentaries on similar subject matter.

Well-meaning but mediocre.

It has to be noted that the use of music in this film is the worse in recent memory: maudlin, syrupy, and overwrought.

The film isn't as biting as The Player or Swimming with Sharks, and neither Howard's struggles nor Lydia's mystery is a match for the electricity of the supporting actresses in their brief roles.

Albaladejo turns his film into a banal, mildly entertaining trifle of affirmation, eliciting a shrug more than any real emotion.

Though sprung from the mind of a woman, the film plays like a hetero male fantasy of tortured love.

Too slow-moving and too understated in much of its humor.

The audience for this film would be those people who like their cinematic fare pre-digested and painfully familiar.

For a film purporting to tell it like it is for black gay men, race is the most poorly handled aspect in Punk's equation; it's almost as if it had no relevance. That might have flown if its most telling moment didn't suggest otherwise.

That's why Special Treatment is so disheartening. The film, starring Huppert, quickly telegraphs that its ideas are too shallow for a talent as deep as hers.

Devotees of Motorhead frontman/certifiable rock icon Lemmy Kilmister will be in heaven watching this gushing love letter to the man who straddles rock subgenres, but anyone who's not already a fan will cry for mercy long before the nearly two-hour film ends.

[Kosareff] backburners what's most fascinating (stories of former titans of the industry; segments discussing how shifting social mores impacted said industry, the key roles of women in the factories) and squanders a chance to discuss the larger implications.

There are so many complicated political, religious, and cultural issues swirling around Yoni's story, and Follow Me keeps them on the sidelines. It is pure hagiography.

There's an off-putting self-absorption in [Tirf's] self-examination-slash-ode-to-Haiti, and it weakens the whole project.