Joe Leydon

Filmed on Tennessee and California locations that convincingly double for everything from Fort Stewart to Iraq, Indivisible feels impressively edgy during battle scenes, especially during a suspenseful firefight set in the streets of Al Sakhar Province.

Commands attention less as historical counterpoint than as a sturdy showcase for the neatly balanced lead performances of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.

Imagine a Troy Donahue-Sandra Dee teen romance of the early ‘60s with an inoffensive undercurrent of social consciousness, and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect from director David L. Cunningham’s thoroughly predictable but lightly enjoyable tale of love and prejudice in 1920s Hawaii.

Often plays more like "Tyler Perry's Greatest Hits" as it recycles various elements from the writer-director's earlier works.

Connor and co-director Michael Worth allow Fort McCoy to proceed at an unhurried pace, giving Stoltz ample opportunity to subtly convey undercurrents of guilt and anger percolating beneath his character’s affable exterior.

A hagiographic portrait of the standup comic and social satirist who never quite reached beyond cult status in the U.S., American: The Bill Hicks Story might have impressed more of the unconverted had it included more performance footage of its subject.

Devotees of folk and bluegrass -- and, of course, diehard Nickel Creek fans -- are the natural audience for this leisurely paced documentary.

Copenhagen remains more intriguing than compelling.

Peter and Bobby Farrelly aimed low and grossed millions with "Dumb & Dumber," so it shouldn't be surprising that Kingpin, their latest effort, offers a similar mix of pratfalls, gross-out gags and jokes about bodily functions. This time, however, the humor is darker, edgier and occasionally, even more scatological.

Martin hits all the right notes while subtly conveying both the appealing sophistication and the purposeful reserve of Ray. But he cannot entirely avoid being overshadowed by Dane's endearingly vulnerable, emotionally multifaceted and fearlessly open performance.

Unfortunately, the new pic never really achieves maximum velocity as a full-throttle action-adventure opus, despite game efforts by returning star Milla Jovovich, still a lithe and lethal dynamo when it comes to butt-kicking, zombie-slicing derring-do.

A modestly clever comedy in which nothing gets seriously out of hand.

The interaction among opposites inspires an abundance of predictable race-based jokes, many of which have the saving grace of actually being funny.

Much like its predecessors, Paranormal Activity 3 is a slow-building, stealthily creepy supernatural thriller that takes a teasingly indirect approach to generating suspense and escalating dread.

The aggressively spectacular (and, again, CGI-intensified) action set-pieces are generously plentiful and undeniably thrilling, and the lead players are charismatic enough, or over-the-top villainous enough, to seize and maintain interest.

A slight but lightly amusing sitcom-style comedy, strongly recalls dinner theater fodder of three decades ago.

Just fast, frenetic and funny enough to amuse both new fans and longtime devotees of the characters who have inspired more than 30 years worth of animated TV episodes and made-for-video features.

A modestly amusing family-friendly comedy about a miniature car race that brings out the worst in overzealous fathers who compete with each other through their children.

The mix of raucous buffoonery and violent mayhem isn’t exactly seamless, and the laugh-out-loud moments come with conspicuously less frequency during a third act that suggests a rough draft for “Bad Boys 3.”

A well-intentioned misfire featuring 3-D CGI animation that recalls lesser vidgames of the mid-1990s.

Diehard gorehounds may be disappointed by its relatively infrequent reliance on graphic and grisly mayhem (relative to this particular subgenre’s standards, that is), but Wexler’s discretion in this area turns out to be one of her film’s few distinguishing characteristics.

For all her attempts at documentary-style verisimilitude, filmmaker Ashley McKenzie doesn’t really cover much new ground with Werewolf.

Scattered stretches of suspense and a few undeniably potent shocks are not enough to dissipate the sense of deja vu that prevails throughout Chernobyl Diaries, a wearyingly predictable thriller about "extreme tourists."

Maggio has cobbled together a modestly diverting, effectively atmospheric but blatantly derivative crime drama sprinkled with a few joltingly nasty plot twists.

Mexican helmer Carolina Rivas obviously intends her slow-paced and contemplative doc as a testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit under dire circumstances.

Strong performances, a few dramatically potent scenes and a vividly specific evocation of locale barely offset hackneyed and muddled elements in a script that plays like a first draft.

Modestly amusing in fits and starts, Fired! proves most potent when on-screen interviewees are playing for keeps, not for laughs.

This handsomely produced but ponderously uplifting trifle should be flagged for excessive schmaltz and offensive illogic.

This is hagiography, not history. If you accept it as such, you may find yourself mildly engrossed from scene to scene, regardless of your political persuasion, without ever viewing “Reagan” as anything more substantial than a small-budget docudrama series on cable TV.

A slackly paced but modestly diverting trifle, with cameos by recording artists Beck, Beth Orton and Hank Williams III to elevate the hipper-than-thou quotient.

Despite these flashbacks, however, God Spoke never really delves into the reasons and/or motivations behind Franken's transformation from monologist and sketch-comedy performer to political pundit and liberal activist. Indeed, even during intimate moments, Franken rarely comes across as someone given to explaining himself.

Quickly devolves into a standard-issue crime drama laced with routine martial artistry.

Despite game efforts from a first-rate cast and acres of impressive production values, Event Horizon remains a muddled and curiously uninvolving sci-fi horror show.

A few individual scenes of hand-to-hand and foot-to-face combat are undeniably exciting, and Jovovich once again impresses with her kinetic athleticism. Overall, however, the repetitiveness and occasional incoherence of the nonstop action leave the audience exhausted for all the wrong reasons.

Toddlers and pre-teens will be entertained, and parents will be pleasantly surprised, by this more-than-just-bearable musical road movie.

The documentary works best when it simply offers a concise and cogent account of epochal events.

Might be extremely effective while preaching to the converted, but it's no great shakes as secular entertainment.

Provides enough cheap thrills and modest suspense to shake a few shekels from genre fans before really blasting off as homevid product.

Just funny enough to mollify purists and amuse the uninitiated.

Despite the bumpy pacing and the routine plot elements, writer-director Le-Van Kiet periodically generates a sense of palpable trepidation during what might best be described as a worst-case scenario about post-partum depression.

Keitel . . . infuses his performance here with more than enough lion-in-winter gravitas to dominate every moment he is on screen, and quite a few when he isn’t, which in turn is sufficient to propel Lansky through stretches when the passing of time is felt, and the budgetary limitations are obvious.

Long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension.

Engaging lead performances and snatches of witty repartee help lubricate the creaky plot mechanics in Weather Girl, a lightly amusing but thoroughly predictable dramedy.

There are sporadic compensations for your investment of time: Ian McShane’s robust overplaying of an unapologetically scuzzy small-town lawman, John Leguizamo’s dead-serious villainy as a scarily resilient hit man, evocative lensing by David Jose Montero, and a few modestly inventive twists in the otherwise predictable plot.

A glossy teen-weepie romance that often plays like an inspirational indie skewed toward Christian niche market.

If you’re among the heretofore uninitiated drawn to this new Dragon Ball extravaganza, which has been dubbed into English and booked into 1,440 North American theaters, you may often find yourself experiencing similar frustration as you struggle to make sense of a patchwork plot that seems derived from various strands of the ongoing mythos, and is filled with apparently major characters whose backstories are only fuzzily defined.

How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town emerges as surprisingly tame fluff, a modestly amusing trifle scarcely saucier than those wink-wink naughty farces that were staples of the ’70s dinner-theater circuit.

La Scala is able to maintain interest and sustain narrative momentum throughout his fantastical narrative, even while he covers overly familiar territory. In this, he gets immeasurable aid from the sincere performances by his game cast.

The picture could provide modest amusement for indulgent viewers with a taste for tales of loquacious killers and not-so-innocent bystanders.

Thanks to the immensely appealing performances by Apa and Robertson, it’s easy for the audience to take a rooting interest in the sometimes awkward, sometimes amusing development of the budding romance between Jeremy and Melissa.

Kind of a drag when it resorts to frantic slapstick and tired action-comedy tropes, but modestly engaging during stretches that suggest the project would have worked better as an exuberant musical.

Scores a few chuckles while following a familiar game plan.

Tonally dissonant and narratively disjointed, Wild Horses plays like a patchwork quilt of scenes excerpted from a much longer movie, or maybe even a miniseries.

Feels achingly sad and frustratingly incomplete.

There is a great deal more style than substance here. The special effects experts and the other members of the technical crew do their considerable best to give their various hacking sequences the look of warp-speed sci-fi fantasy.

Destined to be better remembered for its grisly billboard imagery than for its relatively tame torture-porn tropes, Captivity is a thoroughly nasty piece of work that nonetheless earns credit for generating modest suspense after a predictable but effective plot twist around the 50-minute mark.

A boisterously Tarantinoesque mash-up of cliches, archetypes and bodacious craziness in the tradition of Southern-fried '60s and '70s drive-in fodder, The Baytown Outlaws is the sort of cartoonishly violent and swaggeringly non-PC concoction that defines guilty pleasure for many genre fans.

This family affair is a squeaky-clean cable-ready comedy, unabashedly retro fluff.

Passably pleasant but thoroughly predictable.

Too narratively disjointed to achieve maximum impact, but too emotionally potent in fits and starts to be dismissed out of hand. Ultimately, Over the GW resembles nothing so much as a rough draft for a more conventional feature.

A slickly produced, unabashedly celebratory picture about professional skateboarder Danny Way.

Modestly engaging but thoroughly formulaic drama about a boxer turned preacher who returns to the ring to fund a community-outreach center.

A seamless albeit frequently cornball scenario.

While The Longshots is by no means an unpleasant experience, it feels like a project carried out by people who began with the best of intentions but weren't quite able to sustain their initial enthusiasm.