Ernest Hardy

[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.

Dorian Blues is full of similarly rigged moments, but there are genuine chuckles, and a palpably heartfelt final scene between Dorian and his mom ends the tale on a powerful note.

The tragic ending they tack on to the film reinforces the same fear-mongering notion of cause and effect that gives the Church its power to abuse and exploit, and the film winds up muffling its own powerful protest.

The Painting is a sleekly crafted quilt of moldy racial insight and feel-good kumbaya-isms set against the backdrop of the civil rights era. The acting is competent, TV-movie-of-the-week quality (network, not cable), while every single character is a type you've seen a million times before.

Like the melancholy remininces of an old relative who lived through an exciting, even harrowing time, but no longer possesses the mental faculties to really flesh out the tale they're spinning.

Director Christopher J. Scott hits all the technical marks with his look at the history and current status of snowboarding, yet he doesn’t find a strong enough hook to pull in any except the already converted.

The film only rarely harnesses the power of the anachronistic, funk-driven, beat-heavy rap music that swells its soundtrack. Even the intricately choreographed crowd dance scenes, filled with frenzied movement, are more often stillborn than stimulating.

The brisk, informative film wants to press the urgency of this perfect storm of capitalistic opportunism but is weakened by a frequently overwrought score and cheap graphics that often give Business something of a histrionic undertone.

Where the young writer-director impresses is in the unforced sketching of era details (gas lines, the tacky energy of roller-skating rinks), in the sharp psychological insight into his lead characters, and in the performances he pulls from his actors.

The result often plays more like a satire of the fashion industry than a serious look at one of the humans inside it.

A gorgeously burnished vintage post card come to life, Motorcycle Diaries has about as much depth and emotional currency as the cardboard that post card would be stamped on.

People Places Things crackles to life whenever the camera turns to one of Will's students, Kat (The Daily Show's Jessica Williams), and her professor mother, Diane (Regina Hall).

While Escape is filled with inspired touches... Moore lacks the off-kilter psychological nuances of Lynch, as well as the go-for-broke storytelling skills and visual élan. It doesn't help that the cast is largely competent at best.

The costumes are gorgeous, and the settings are plush, but the acting is merely serviceable, and the film lacks either the wit or the energy of its predecessors. Long before it ends, you find yourself indifferent to the fate of the mismatched lovebirds or anyone else in the tale.

It's when adults with whitewashed notions of childhood get hold of a camera that kiddie fare - like this uninspired effort from writer-director Eric Hendershoot - goes limp.

Sofia Coppola, who's directed the film from her own screenplay, narrowly misses making the story work on the screen.

While moderately entertaining, the film also captures another old dynamic: The “ew” factor dissolves into the yawn factor with surprising quickness.

Orlando Jones, buff and commanding, steals the film as Soul Train, a lawyer-biker, while Lisa Bonet, a sexy, enigmatic earth mother, is stranded in a movie that has no idea what to do with her.

The film lacks a pulse. There's sound and fury, but the result is more drizzle than tempest.

For all the violence and breaking-up-to-make-up that go on, there's never really a sense of risk or exploration, and the film's pulse never rises above faint.

Wants to be many things, but ends up being not much of anything.

The film offers no new insights into its people or into the dynamics of the Hollywood machine -- the whole affair, played for low-intensity laughs, is numbingly familiar.

Danner, the film's sole strength, does what she can with the material, but it's not enough to offset writer-director Daniel Adams' cliché-ridden script and leaden direction, or the excruciating hamfest that is Richard Dreyfuss' lead performance.

The cast (which includes familiar character actors like Nicolas Coster and David Leisure) is wildly uneven, talent-wise, and there's a stiltedness to the film's earnestness, but its sincerity is palpable.

The cutesy opening of writer-director David Moreton's Testosterone (co-written with Dennis Hensley) turns out to be a crippling miscalculation.

Daydream is decently acted, overwritten, slickly shot, decked out with the requisite indie soundtrack, and propped up with angst-ridden poses and pouting lips. It's also another film in which on-screen teens, especially the nubile femme fatale at the center, are but vessels to showcase the screenwriter's irony-drenched, self-satisfied intellect.

A very competent film, but it barely pulls you in.

So riddled with unanswered questions that it requires gargantuan leaps of faith just to watch it plod along, while McCann's overly broad strokes miss crucial details as he tries to mount an attack on both the power of the media and an indifferent medical profession.

The whole point is nothing more than the revelation that the terrain of suburbia is populated with damaged people inflicting damage on others. This is still news?

It's not bad; it's just completely inconsequential.

We should expect more of summer fare than that it merely be a visual junk-food snack as we cool off in the chill of a darkened theater.

What really sink the film are the script's reductive, outdated psychological implications (molestation leads to queerness/transsexualism) and its clumsy melodramatics.

Intermittently amusing, rarely illuminating and ultimately tedious documentary.

There are undoubtedly several moving moments in the film, and the kids are gorgeous and heartbreaking, but none of that is strong enough to balance Braat's galling and enabled narcissism, which pervades the film.

It could have been a hoot in a bad-movie way if the laborious pacing and endless exposition had been tightened. As it is, only LaSalle's sizzling performance makes Crazy more than a by-the-numbers psycho-horror thriller.

The script plays like something by an English major overstuffed with knowledge of lit but whose real-life experience is drawn largely from movies -- and whose simplistic views on race and class are straight out of the white liberal's "But I mean well..." handbook.

What really hamstrings Sinner, though, is the hetero narcissism beneath its enlightened posturing.

The result is at once a woefully overfamiliar bashing of Hollywood superficiality and a seemingly unwitting paean to the self-absorbed enlightenment that passes among industry folk for personal growth.

Has one thing to recommend it, but even that will likely appeal to a small subset of filmgoers: the cult of Brendan Sexton III.

Mangold can't escape the fact that instead of someone in the throes of a genuine existential crisis, his star comes off as -- to paraphrase nurse Whoopi Goldberg -- a spoiled, lazy girl who's afraid to face life.

Writer-director J.B. Ghuman Jr. shoehorns the character into a witlessly stitched homage to other films - notably "Heathers."

The problem is, director Robert Lee King has a hard time sustaining the aimed-for camp tone, and while there are a few well-spaced giggles to be had, the movie sputters more than it soars for most of its 95 minutes.

The tedium of the situation is felt by the audience, but too often in the wrong way: We don't empathize so much as suffer through the movie.

It's a wit-free homage to Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan that, for all its slick presentation, never comes close to hitting the mark of its forebears.

This look at the assorted struggles of modern hetero coupledom gives off a distinctly moldy aroma.

It’s amusing, but it also eventually becomes tedious, like a comedy sketch that milks a good joke just a little too long.

A taut mess -- beautiful, gory, tedious and puzzling.

Striking the right balance between interior and exterior can mean the difference between compelling drama and accidental melodrama. Writer-director Ron Morales just misses equilibrium in the visually arresting Filipino thriller Graceland.

The film's power lies in the fact that the façade is crumbling on the actress even as she clings to it. That this is not a pathetic sight is due to the grit that we glimpse through the cracks. It's Barbie, becoming human.

There's satiric comedy to be mined from the conflicting messages society still sends about pregnancy, motherhood, and women's worth, but the script isn't smart enough to explore them.

Doesn't live up to its genre-crossing, parodic ambitions.

Chabria lacks the effervescent touch, in both his clichéd, logic-challenged writing and his leaden direction, to make you care. Though the film is crammed with music -- the soundtrack is stellar -- the production numbers fall completely flat, leaving you to pine for the over-caffeinated touch of Baz Luhrmann.

The opening moments of -- are some of the funniest --the rest of the movie beats you over the head with jokes, and though funny in parts, it's never this smart again.

There are a handful of laughs, but nothing to balance the onslaught of clichés.

A substandard romantic comedy gussied up in Indian drag.

Heartfelt but insipid drama, the naiveté quickly becomes exasperating.

Reiner, in very broad strokes, works in issues of poverty, thwarted dreams and family obligation, and almost pulls it off, thanks to Anthony Edwards, Aidan Quinn, Rebecca De Mornay, Penelope Ann Miller and John Mahoney, who impart humor and humanity to thinly sketched characters.

The viewer is meant to chuckle at the escalating violence-ringed absurdities (the kidnapping of a bafflingly passive drug dealer who winds up becoming a road-trip buddy, for example) and at Ray's brutish philosophies, but the chuckles are few. Though the film starts out modestly amusing, it very, very quickly lists into tedium.

The film taps the same spiritual thirst and anxiety that has made cultural phenomena of "The Da Vinci Code" and the "Left Behind" series. And it’s just as cheesy.

If it registers at all, it'll likely be more because of the fuckability of Morris Chestnut -- a star waiting for a worthy film -- than any insights or memorable moments from the movie itself.

Rung with numb inarticulateness.

Stranded in superficiality, the film is a lifestyle commercial.

It doesn't help that the level of acting in the film brings nothing but accidental humor to the mix.

Slick, polished to perfection, derivative and stripped of any of the real quirks or idiosyncrasies that make a romantic comedy fly.

In many ways reminiscent of "Mesrine" but suffers greatly in comparison. It hits many of the same marks -- but the scenes unfold almost elliptically, never really building or illuminating character, and never sparking narrative momentum.

What makes The Cell worth viewing at all is the carefully sculpted imagery.

The film needs strong characters and snappy dialogue to carry it through. It has neither.

Beautifully filmed but written without the psychological depth or sleight of hand of the best thrillers.

At a minimum, the film might inspire some people to hit up Google for a crash course on this historical narrative.

Writer-director Thomas Verrette's thriller grapples with the foundational relationship between memory and self-identity. It's a well-trod path of exploration, and Verrette-- largely competent, often pedestrian-- doesn't bring much new to the investigative process.

As exasperating as it is insightful. The film ultimately falters, though, because it's so resolutely old-fashioned.

One part stand-up comedy concert film (think Kings of Comedy) to two parts social outreach activism, documentary The Muslims Are Coming! works somewhat better as the latter than the former.

A constant video rental for a community that aches to see itself as banal and generic.

The actors do what they can with direction, from Gil Cates Jr., that calls for yelling, flailing and rapid-fire delivery of stale bons mots, but none of the film is as funny or clever as Cates and screenwriters Ron Marasco and Michael Goorjian (adapting Edgar Allan Poe's short story) seem to think.

Pandering, stiffly acted and brimming with awkward (if progressive) political posturing, Rock's films attempt to filter old Hollywood formula through a hip-hop sensibility.

The Animal is tailor-made for last-resort Friday-night rentals.

It's hollow, forced and false.

Lukewarm melodrama disappoints.

Less would have been more, and this film is sabotaged by its maker's unchecked pretension.

Merkin tries too hard for stylistic flourishes (as the hyper set-designed, claustrophobically seedy hotel underscores) and winds up almost sinking the noir-ish tale he’s telling.

There are also strong flickers here of a film that might have been.

This schizophrenic mess zigzags all over the place, trying to figure out whether it's a dysfunctional-family drama, a slapstick comedy or an angst-ridden coming-of-age movie.

It limps, not gallops, across the screen for what seems an interminable stretch of time and leaves the viewer with precious little to show for the experience.

There's no real story and that would be fine, if Rogers and screenwriter Adam Herz could keep from pretending otherwise.

To be fair, the cast is largely good, given the material.

Obvious in its observations, predictable in its conclusions, and a little dull in the telling.

The road to moviegoing hell is paved with well-intentioned queer cinema, and Hate Crime is a red stone on that path.

A vanity project riding the waves of a socio-political moment, Two confirms just as many stereotypes as it attempts to dismantle.

A Man Apart isn't awful, but it is almost reflexively rote, evoking countless other outlaw-cop films that are smarter, tighter and more fun.

More predictable than its makers seem aware, its emotional hooks much too dull to pull us in.

Remains short on charm, purpose or laughs.

What follows is a film as odd as its title character. Timothy flings grown-up ideas at the viewer but rips the teeth from them rather than risk our discomfort.

Director Paolo Virzi (who co-wrote the script with Francesco Bruni) errs badly by creating totems and types in lieu of characters.

As Serendipity moves into the final stretch, Chelsom's direction becomes frenzied but still lethargic; he never breathes life into the film.

Wrought with pretension -- and a blind eye to its own exploitation.

By the time the final gotcha plot twist unfolds, it's not the intended tears but a yawn that is produced.