Ernest Hardy

It's not really original stuff, and there are few genuine surprises, but Painter skillfully layers visual details and off-the-cuff dialogue into a smart, condescension-free piece on small towns and the complicated lives they contain. The standout here is the always-wonderful Seymour (Hotel Rwanda, Birth).

Shot on digital and layered with animated segments, performance footage and clips from Smith family home movies, Family Movie unfolds with a gentle, justified confidence in the power of its subject.

Beautifully shot, the film is unapologetically a crowd-pleaser whose gentleness of tone flows from its subject.

Kline, Debbie Reynolds (as his mom) and Tom Selleck are all wonderful. But it's the always amazing Cusack, playing the baffled Emily, who steals the film in a smooth transition from wide-eyed fiancée to possibly wronged woman, a role she essays with a perfect balance of wounded-ness and comedic aplomb.

A decently acted, often drolly funny, tautly directed thriller that proves to be a Russian doll of motivations, coincidences, and plot-twists; it would have been more satisfying if it weren't so unnecessarily convoluted.

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.

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.

This time around, writer-director Robert Rodriguez has stumbled badly, creating a clunky, gadget-happy film full of characters -- even returning ones -- about whom it is hard to care.

The characters are put through worn-out cinematic paces, making both them and their tales tedious. Green Dragon plays as hollow catharsis, with lots of tears but very little in the way of insights.

Unfortunately, whenever the story quiets down for exposition or to move the plot forward, it all becomes a grinding and often confusing bore.

Steadfastly conventional.

Too self-consciously dark, too aware of its long, murky, art-designed descent into the underbelly of America's addictive personality.

That crack in Vitale's storytelling foundation would be forgivable if the writing, acting and character epiphanies . . . well, existed. As it is, not even Scotti's formidable lips can blow life into this stillborn flick.

David John Swajeski, who directed, produced, and edited this documentary on the fledgling fashionista, snags his film on clichés, poor pacing, and an unwillingness or inability to push his subject beyond talk-show pop-psych babble when the topic is interior life and wounds.

Working from a preachy, clumsy script that's full of gaping holes in logic, plot and character development, director Zak Tucker is also handicapped by a cast filled with actors who seem to be in their first year of acting school.

What really makes the film fall dead (although the preview audience I saw it with howled from beginning to end) are the actors and the way the characters have been scripted.

The film, directed by Jesse Baget, aims to be a satiric look at racism but at every turn flaunts the laws of logic and believability.

Crushingly airless film -- Food chokes on its own depiction of upper-crust decorum.

Sitcom humor substitutes for wit, and tedious angst supplies the drama.

What follows is one set piece after another in which the women make fools of themselves as the script herds them toward a happy ending of hugs and tears.

It all collapses under an atrocious performance by Pacino, whose laughably bad accent and scene-chewing delivery serve up thick slabs of that rarest of delicacies: Jewish ham. There may be grounds here for a class-action lawsuit.

Afailed attempt at a hipster screwball comedy. Very failed.

In the end, Some Fish Can Fly doesn't.

The film is ultimately more labored than inspired. A cameo by James Brown is amusing, but it can't keep The Tuxedo from earning the distinction of being Chan's worst Hollywood film to date.

The film ultimately plays less as female empowerment than it does a narrative in which the comeuppance doled out is likely to be received as a digestif for those in the audience who got off on the gendered violence in the first place.

Too bad that Josh's story, ostensibly the core of the film, is overshadowed by Calloused Hands' retro racial views.

The biggest problem is that the character of Sabine is such a lame male fantasy of the enigmatic woman-child.

The script is often ludicrous (gratuitous digs at feminism; muddled commentary on war and the military), the sets look like sets, and the acting-aside from Helsham and Plunkett-doesn't even rise to the level of student films.

Renton's competing tones and intentions result in a film at odds with itself and its lead performance.

The film isn't very good. The Million Dollar Hotel is an uneasy melding of Hollywood shtick and art-house sensibilities.

Patterson seems more concerned with getting the surfaces right (costume design, production design) than tapping any of the adrenaline that should be pumping through bank robberies, love scenes, and confrontations with barking loan sharks — adrenaline we should feel even if the protagonist is meant to be cucumber-cool.

Manipulative, feel-good drivel wrapped around a cloying performance by Kevin Spacey.

Its soap-opera plot is old hat, and the largely amateurish acting of the ensemble makes it hard to connect with many of the characters.

Hopefully, the next time around, Chadha's imagination will be in the service of not just excellent casting and directing, but a script to match those other cinematic components.

Lazily directed by Charles Stone III (the man behind Budweiser's "Whassup?!" campaign) from a leaden script by Matthew Cirulnick and novelist Thulani Davis.

There's a lot of potential in the idea of exploring asexuality in the modern world, but The Olivia Experiment loses it in a sea of clichéd characters.

Derivative, cliché-ridden and old hat.

The humor is, at best, thudding. At its worst, it's breathtakingly stupid and offensive.

Ross's on-the-nose script offers little subtext or nuance, and the film—for all the inherent drama of the situation—has very little real-life grit.

It's a dud. To be fair, the source material (to which the film is unfortunately faithful) is itself a wan assemblage of creaky one-liners, overly familiar gay ghetto types and sitcom-inspired shenanigans.

An often gorgeous, dizzying assault of ideas and visual flourishes...it's just not very good.

As Bomb snakes its way toward tragedy, it grates rather than entices. The actors come off more as poseurs than as characters, and the film's political and cultural insights are superficial and old hat.

As the characters mix and mingle, pouring out their tales of woe online and fumbling real-life connections, Weintrob leaves no cliché unturned in getting to root causes of behavior.

This hypersleek film is surprisingly lax for its first half... The ending is dumb.

A tedious exercise in filling in historical blanks through exhausted tropes.

The thread holding it all together is endless, repetitive, interminable fight scenes whose limp choreography is spiced up with Matrix-style slow motion -- in 2015. For all that -- fists flying, bullets dodged, gratuitous female nudity -- the film is oddly inert.

Less forgivable is the fact that this is a film in which characters are flung out of character solely for cheap laughs and rarely actually listen or talk to one another.

Intentionally blurs fiction and reality.

Playing like the redundant child of The Wolf of Wall Street and Boiler Room, Americons has its heart and justifiably outraged politics in the right place; it just lacks artistry or real insight.

Quite unintentionally, director Luis Llosa and screenwriters Hans Bauer, Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. have crafted a howler; Anaconda, meant to be a nail-biting thriller, is a laugh-out-loud comedy.

Walter's self-conscious efforts at quirkiness...and cartoonishly drawn characters...try too hard while falling far short of their marks.

Buried beneath Silent Hill’s hyper-stylized stupidity (the film looks like a collaboration between David Fincher, Trent Reznor and music video director Mark Romanek) is the hollow effort to bottle something of the zeitgeist unease surrounding religious fundamentalism.

A movie that’s full of sound, fury and unintentional camp -- and is still bafflingly inert.

Politically simplistic (if not naive) and aesthetically sterile.

The script is painfully underbaked, and director Bille Woodruff (Honey) continues to raise a question: How can someone from a music-video background have absolutely no sense of rhythm, timing or pacing?

The obvious, cliché-ridden visual style of this probe into the life, work and legacy of Carlos Castaneda ends up working very much against its subject.

Fails because it takes itself both too seriously and not seriously enough.

Like a lot of recent queer-themed cinema that aspires to be politically charged, Maple Palm takes a hot-button issue (here, it's homophobic U.S. immigration policies) and reduces it to dry sloganeering and shameless emotional manipulation of the audience.

The story is unnecessarily muddled and confusing in the telling, and the athletically gifted Yen is overshadowed by largely mediocre CGI effects. Revisit the original instead.

Singleton has neither the emotional nor intellectual depth to do justice to his thesis. He is too in awe of the stereotypical hood lifestyles and macho posturings that he's trying to critique.

It's a mean-spirited exercise in stilted outrageousness.

Quickly reveals itself to be a hyper-stylized flick (lots of odd angles and studied production design in the service of flashbacks and dream sequences), but the glossy sum effect is that of a film student straining for a weightiness he can't pull off.

Superficiality and cliché mark the film's notions of family, dysfunction, and even survival.

Written and directed by Tommy Oliver, 1982 is a ham-fisted morality tale about love, marriage and the fallout of the ‘80s crack epidemic as though told by someone whose intel on all three came primarily from pulp sources.

The drama is unintentionally humorous, the humor incredibly labored and the acting rarely better than one might find in a Chi Chi LaRue XXX production.

Just about the only good thing you can say about Spike Lee's pointless, didactic The 25th Hour is that it's filled with strong performances, albeit of stock characters.

Empty details pile up, awful performance art is doled out, talking heads are intermittently identified, and the late Brandon Teena is evoked to little real purpose.

Hinges almost completely on the taut body and delectable beauty of Jessica Alba, but is otherwise so riddled with limp clichés that it doesn't even qualify as a guilty pleasure.

After enduring 30 minutes of awful slapstick, shit jokes, gags revolving around used condoms, cholo caricatures, and women who are all psychos, sluts or Latina fuck-dolls, I walked.

In trying to avoid moralizing or cheap sensationalizing, Didier sidestepped any energy force altogether and his film snoozes because of it.

Appalling because it never transcends its adolescent-boy glee at being allowed entry to the highly sexualized arena of prostitution.

Director Raja Gosnell apparently doesn't even try to pump life into this wan film version of the beloved Saturday-morning cartoon.

From concept to execution to tone, writer-director Liz W. Garcia's The Lifeguard is a lifeless misfire.