Joe Leydon

A few abrupt narrative transitions indicate that some scenes, for whatever reason, must have been discarded during the editing process. But what remains on screen is enough to hold attention and generate rooting interest, especially if you’re amused by inside-baseball allusions to the film and TV industry.

Lightweight but likable.

An undemanding dramedy.

A spectacularly trashy and aggressively flashy motorcycle melodrama in which computer-enhanced action scenes, unbound by gravity or logic, are choreographed, photographed and edited to resemble video-game stratagems.

Yes, the film overall is more diverting than stirring. Still, there is a good deal more than novelty value going for this group effort.

It’s an occupational hazard of rambling psychogeography that the unwary traveller will find themselves irritated as often as they are enthralled: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Gee negotiates this hurdle with variable success.

Neatly balancing brightly sentimental comedy with slightly edgier funny business, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone pulls off the impressive trick of generating laughs on a consistent basis while spinning a clever scenario about rival magicians waging a Las Vegas turf war with a wide multi-demographic appeal.

The Legend of Ron Jeremy is, at a brisk 75 minutes, long enough to get the job done.

Vacation Friends does earn a fair share of guffaws with its familiar mix of R-rated raunch and feel-good sentiment, and it’s lightly amusing to see the well-cast players breathe a satisfying degree of fresh life into a predictable scenario that recalls “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” “What About Bob?” and a dozen or so similarly contrived comedies.

If ever a proselytizing documentary could be described as assaultive, Survivors Guide to Prison might sport that label as a badge of honor.

To be fair: Maybe I Do is undemanding, painless and pleasantly diverting, and has the saving grace of never trying too hard for a cheap laugh. There are quite a few undeniably funny lines, many of them made all the more amusing by the perfect-pitch delivery of the pros in the cast.

Offers a largely satisfying mix of broad slapstick, seriocomic sentimentality and mostly amusing satirical thrusts at easy targets.

While there's something undeniably fascinating about the way Fairhaven repeatedly avoids predictable payoffs for portentous dramatic setups, narrative momentum is conspicuous by its absence.

Lead players Lauren Lapkus and co-scripter Nick Rutherford are amply engaging and sympathetic, even when the behavior of their characters is cringe-worthy embarrassing. No, never mind: Make that especially when those characters are humiliating themselves for our enjoyment.

A one-joke comedy that is good for more than a few good laughs.

Aimed squarely at moppets with minuscule attention spans, “The Rugrats Movie” is a fast and frenetic animated feature that should delight young aficionados of the long-running Nickelodeon TV series.

How much mileage can a comedy get from a single joke? Quite a bit, judging from the guffaws-to-groaners ratio in MacGruber.

The final scenes stop far short of providing the cheap thrill of a feel-good wrap-up, and are all the more effective for that.

A lightly engaging bilingual trifle that benefits greatly from the charm of lead player Jaime Camil, a Mexican TV and film star who evidences smooth self-assurance at the wheel of what could be his crossover vehicle.

Although it sporadically errs on the side of sentimentality and simplification, The Case for Christ sustains interest, and even generates mild suspense, while offering a faith-based spin on the template of an investigative-journalism drama.

Grim but engrossing.

The deliberately jittery hand-held lensing enhances the mockery in this mockumentary.

May be too grisly to extend its appeal beyond its fan base.

Based loosely and playfully on Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," From Prada to Nada is a predictable but pleasant comedy.

Neatly avoiding temptations toward mawkish excess, writer-director Chris Dowling hits a solid double with Where Hope Grows, his intelligently affecting faith-based drama.

Documentarian Jessica Yu employs everything from animation and voiceover thesping to archival documents and eyewitness accounts while examining Henry Darger, a self-taught artist who has been posthumously lionized as a visionary genius.

A by-the-playbook, family-friendly basketball comedy that never strays outside the paint, Thunderstruck likely won’t score much coin during its limited theatrical runs. Still, this lightly amusing confection — a Warner Premiere presentation that all too obviously resembles a typical made-for-homevid product — could rebound during playoffs in smallscreen platforms.

Evan Ross impresses with an implosive performance as Tariq Mahdi, a moody young African-American.

The adults do little more than provide marquee allure in brief bookending scenes that add little to rest of the pic. For the most part, Now and Then is a showcase for four fine actresses in their early teens.

Well-cast relationship comedy-drama is played too broadly in the early going, but gradually settles into a more appealing groove as a glossy date-movie.

Run This Town offers some sharp observations about the struggle to provide anything like watchdog journalism in an age of diminished budgets and readership.

Premise is formulaic and execution is predictable, but Brock maintains a lively pace while eliciting first-rate work from thesps.

Choreographer-turned-filmmaker Franc. Reyes covers familiar ground without stumbling or dazzling.

The sort of movie a lot of us need right now. It’s an undemandingly enjoyable and reassuringly predictable dramedy in which nothing, not even the sourball attitudes of its comically unpleasant malcontents, ever is allowed to get out of hand or unduly strain credibility. But it also is too playfully spiky and unaffectedly down-to-earth to come across as bland pablum.

A pleasantly predictable faith-based dramedy.

Despite the considerable impediment of a premise arguably even sillier than that of the original "Red Dawn," helmer Dan Bradley's long-delayed remake of John Milius' 1984 kids-vs.-Commies adventure delivers enough thrilling action sequences and rock-'em, sock-'em fantasy-fulfillment to amp its B.O. potential.

Ultimately, however, this tonally untidy yet incrementally affecting dramedy scores a cumulative impact by credibly and astutely depicting eruptions, disruptions and reconciliations during the long goodbye to a dying paterfamilias.

This thoroughly predictable but undeniably engaging faith-based drama is an inoffensively old-fashioned entertainment that, with only minor tweaking, could pass for a Walt Disney Studios release of yore.

The documentary is too tepid to generate anything like excitement or outrage, and elicits admiration more for its intentions than for its execution.

Offers a relatively fresh take on standard-issue exorcism-melodrama tropes, along with a performance by Aaron Eckhart that is more than persuasive enough to encourage the investment of a rooting interest.

Performances are unremarkable but acceptable pretty much across the board, and the vocal talents -- particularly Thomas Haden Church as the belligerent Tazer and Josh Peck as the lovable Sparks -- are well cast.

A solidly crafted piece of work that, despite its leisurely pacing, manages to infuse a respectable amount of fresh vigor into clichés and conventions common to shoot-’em-ups set during the post-Civil War era.

This filmed-in-Texas road movie finds a smooth groove between self-conscious quirkiness and broadly played farce.

Inside the Rain is so fresh and audacious in so many ways that it’s a bit of letdown when it leans heavily on the cliché of the Gold-Hearted Hooker — or, in this case, the Gold-Hearted Porn Actress and Part-Time Escort — to provide Benjamin with inspiration, emotional support, and, most important, a female lead for his film.

Even though Frakes is back, Star Trek: Insurrection plays less like a stand-alone sci-fi adventure than like an expanded episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

There's no denying the pic's overall impact as a compelling study of art as a source of transcendence. And it will come as no surprise if this well-crafted doc eventually serves as source material for a dramatic feature.

This overly long yet consistently involving period drama... could be described, accurately, as equal parts “Remember the Titans” and revivalist tent meeting. But until the balance tips rather too blatantly toward the latter during the final minutes, the overall narrative mix of history lesson, gridiron action and spiritual uplift is effectively and satisfyingly sustained.

The film sustains more than enough dramatic tension from scene to scene to keep a viewer intrigued, despite the sporadic fuzziness of motivation and plot specifics.

Throughout most of the movie’s running time, Modine is tasked with the majority of the heavy lifting, and he handles the burden admirably.

A harmless and frequently humorous trifle.

Although closer in tone to "Office Space" than Herman Melville, Jonathan Parker's absurdist update of Bartleby is surprisingly faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of the "Moby-Dick" author's 1853 novella about an under-achieving Wall Street copy clerk.

Infused with a strong sense of moral outrage, The Empire in Africa provides more heat than light while attempting to explain the motives and methods of combatants who waged the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone.

Lightweight but likable entertainment.

Too muted to have much lasting impact, and remains modestly diverting only on a scene-to-scene basis. There's no quotable dialogue, no standout action sequence, no flashy supporting performances -- in short, nothing to lift Illegal Tender from the level of competent but inconsequential B-movie.

For most of its running time, Fordson wanders far from the gridiron to offer overall impressions of a close-knit community of Arab-Americans who, in the wake of 9/11, often have found themselves targeted and stereotyped as militant Islamists or worse.

Bader does a respectable job of sustaining interest by repeatedly introducing clichés and genre tropes, then upending expectations or taking unpredictable detours.

This two-seated star vehicle for top-billed Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz wrings a respectable number of laughs from a formulaic scenario about attracted-opposites who bicker and back-stab their way toward happily-ever-aftering.

Its low-key charms are considerable enough to engage venturesome ticketbuyers.

By turns poignant and plodding, affecting and affected, Ithaca is the sort of frustrating movie that’s just good enough to make you wish it were a lot better.

A strictly members-only entertainment for a dedicated target audience, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ will impress the uninitiated as very loud and very colorful, but not nearly fast-paced enough.

There’s really nothing new here. Still, it’s hard to deny the sporadically satisfying nostalgic appeal of this dash down memory lane.

An uncommonly satisfying mix of medieval fantasy, high-tech military action and "Mad Max"-style misadventure.

Ticket buyers get two Jackie Chans for the price of one in Twin Dragons, but the pic itself is no great bargain.

Wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the most valuable player here, revealing impressive comic chops and megawatt charisma even while serving as a human punchline for many of the pic's predictable sight gags.

The filmmaker also makes effective use of some timeworn narrative conventions to build and sustain suspense.

An initially intriguing but ultimately exhausting tale of grieving parents left quite literally dazed and confused in the wake of their young son’s death.

Has a washed-out look that may be off-putting to auds who might otherwise enjoy the pic's uncondescending view of Southern characters and customs.

A tickle-and-tease teen sex comedy that plays like a late-night channel-surf through soft-core sitcoms, "American Pie" wannabes and '80s Brat Pack romances.

McBride is good for a few chuckles during the first two-thirds of the movie and continues to contribute a fair share of funny business after the plot takes a not altogether persuasive serious turn. But Brolin remains the main attraction, and the saving grace, during this lost weekend in the woods.

Despite all the flash and filigree, this monster movie is curiously -- and conspicuously -- lacking in heart.

Even when the blood-and-thunder hokiness of the over-the-top plot tilts perilously close to absurdity, the admirably straight-faced performances by well-cast lead players provide just enough counterbalance to sustain audience curiosity and sympathy.

Fortunately, helmer Michele Ohayon ("Cowboy del Amor") treats her tricky subject matter with sufficient sensitivity to keep doc from ever seeming offensively flip or overly sentimental.

An engagingly rambunctious toon Western that likely will attract herds of family auds, if not multitudes of teens and tweeners, to megaplex corrals.

Agreeably amusing but unduly extended, Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola suggests what might have resulted had Rodgers and Hammerstein lived long enough to attempt a Broadway musical about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

A beautifully lensed but ploddingly paced tribute.

The very best thing in the entire movie is Rourke’s surprisingly affecting and consistently riveting portrayal of Kaden as a melancholy monster who is at once painfully self-aware and unapologetically amoral.

Earnest and understated, Weekend has the intimate look and feel of a two-character stage play that has been opened up -- but only slightly, with minimal addition of supporting players -- for a mostly faithful filmization.

Movies as diverse as “Short Cuts,” “Weekend at Bernie’s,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Magnolia” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth” are among the source material that inspire wink-wink allusions and tonal disruptions throughout Super Deluxe, an overextended and wildly uneven Tamil-language extravaganza that manages to impress largely because it’s such a shoot-the-works, go-for-broke mess.

It's almost impossible to enjoy this uneven but mostly exciting popcorn pic without flinching at a few plot elements that feel a bit too real for comfort.

By turns comical and compassionate.

Once again displaying the kinetic grace, authoritative physicality and heavy-duty footwear that have made her a cult favorite for fans of the “Underworld” franchise, Beckinsale is fun to watch in both the real and fantasy fight sequences that take up much of the briskly paced Jolt.

Manages the difficult feat of being genuinely scary and sharply self-satirical all at once.

Mason, a close friend of Hutchins, constructs a propulsive and compelling narrative by skillfully interlacing interviews with people involved in the tragedy — including the OSHA investigator who uncovered a pattern of risky behavior on the “Rust” set — with news footage, police interrogations, and video recorded on cellphones and police minicams.

Distinctive, physically ravishing indie is a natural for fests, but it's questionable whether this sometimes involving, sometimes obscure pic will have appeal beyond the specialty market.

Small children who will accept it as rock-'em, sock-'em excitement with a touch of gender-specific empowerment, and hipper teens and grown-ups who can appreciate the whole thing as a semisatirical hoot.

As discomfortingly fascinating as listening to a couple's heated argument at a table near yours in a restaurant.

At heart an unabashedly retro work, reveling in the cliches and conventions of the slasher horror pics that proliferated in the early 1980s.

Will please devotees without attracting many, if any, new converts.

The screenplay by Chris Dowling and Tyler Poelle is, at best, predictable pulp with a smidgen of religion. Indeed, the characters are so thinly written that they are defined entirely by the actors portraying them. But director Ben Smallbone (brother of the movie’s lead player) is adept at generating suspense.

Newcomer Rachel Hendrix grabs attention and sustains sympathy as a lovely yet troubled 19-year-old student determined to unlock the secrets of her past after learning the circumstances of her birth.

Sufficiently sweet to serve as a date movie for all ages, Lost for Words comes across as almost subversively retrograde in its old-fashioned approach to charting the slow blossoming of a cross-cultural romance.

Character's multiple mid-life crises could make this genuinely engaging drama especially appealing to older viewers.

There are some very funny bits and pieces scattered amid the proceedings, along with a few darkly comical gags that appear to belong in a different movie, but are more than welcome here.

For the most part, Lemmon, like Matthau, recycles shtick from earlier, better pictures. But then again, their roles call for little else, and Out to Sea actually benefits from their stock turns. [30 June 1997, p.65]

It’s a marked improvement over Feifer’s own “Catch the Bullet,” released just last September — and it features a ferociously nasty turn by Bruce Dern in a role that recalls a character from yet another golden oldie, Walter Brennan’s vicious Old Man Clanton in “My Darling Clementine.”

A B movie that somehow won the lottery and got an A-movie cast and director.

Not quite a three-pointer, but definitely more than an airball, "Celtic Pride" is an uneven but largely likable basketball-themed comedy that should lay up decent B.O. numbers and perform even better in the homevid arena.

Modestly engaging but mostly unexceptional.